


Red and Black

by notenuffcaffeine



Series: Borderlines [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 3A happened but 3B didn't, BAMF Derek, BAMF Stiles, Bounty Hunters, Fluff and Angst, Gen, I Blame Tumblr, M/M, Prompt Fic, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Stiles POV, Werewolf Hunters, Whump, and snarky baddies, here thar be swear words, involuntary road trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 37,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1550126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenuffcaffeine/pseuds/notenuffcaffeine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"See, now that's the wrong way to look at it.  Don't look at it as a kidnapping.  You're just relocating. Your buddy has a nice cushy new job waiting for him. You'll be taken care of. Easy." The hunter thought he was clever.  Stiles stared at him.</p><p>"What the hell do you mean?" he blurted.</p><p>"For the most part, your werewolf buddies? They do great in the personal security sector. Bodyguards, bouncers..." The hunter behind the wheel shrugged.</p><p>"Mall cops," added the passenger.  “Mercenaries.”</p><p>"Especially your former alpha-types. They get wired different and don't change back completely. Makes them easier to train for the jobs," said the driver.  "They pick it up faster, stick with it longer."</p><p>"Way better reflexes."</p><p>The observation had both men nodding to themselves like they had a clue what they were talking about.  Stiles stared between the two like they had lost their minds.</p><p>-...or...-</p><p>When someone targets former alpha Derek Hale for a "relocation" to a new "career path," Stiles Stilinski is unhappily drafted into the project with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Over on tumblr, somebody asked me to write an explanatory fic based on this [ gifset ](http://coffeewithgrey.tumblr.com/post/83956249140) with the slight glitch being that she has not yet seen 3B. So... here's a gazillion words of an alternate universe in which 3b didn't happen but that gifset still does...
> 
>  
> 
> \----

"I didn't screw it up."

"I watched you, Stiles. You screwed it up."

"Oh, fine, you watched me. So then which of us saw the problem happening and didn't fix it?" The challenge was met by guilty silence and Stiles shook his head. "Smart one."

The pair were lucky to be walking away whole after screwing up a blend of dry chemicals that were no less incendiary. The old Hale house was a pile of ready tinder and could have sent them both up in smoke if it had gone too badly wrong. But Allison had gotten word of a few unsavory hunter types in town and Derek wanted to try an old family recipe for a protection boundary that didn't require mountain ash. It obviously hadn't worked, but Derek wasn't allowing that maybe it hadn't worked because he hadn't remembered it right in the first place. Either way, it was nearly midnight on a school night and they were giving up. Stiles grabbed the lantern and waited by the door for his ride to hurry up.

"Come on, man, I still gotta get my car and get home from your place," said Stiles.

"Leave it," said Derek. "I'll pick you up from school and you can get it then."

"We're going to try again?" Stiles asked.

"I'm going to run the recipe by Peter to see if he can remember," allowed Derek. Stiles accepted that as a win and followed Derek toward the door. Suddenly there was a crash and the report of gunfire and Derek was on the floor. Stiles put the camp lantern down and started to dodge toward him, not left with any good sources for cover anyway in the shattered house, but someone showed up in the doorway. The pistol in their hand warned Stiles back and he stopped where he was, stuck.

"Derek..." Stiles said, hoping for at least a verbal confirmation of life.

"Shut up," said Derek. He was his usual cheerful self, curled on the floor and clutching his leg. The gunman at the door smiled and nodded.

"Listen to your wolf, kid," he said. That narrowed him down to the hunter category. Perfect. Crap.

"He's not healing," said Stiles anyway. "Let me help him..."

"Considering I'm the one who shot him, what exactly possessed you to think I want him healing?" The hunter laughed. He was blonde and annoying and instantly fit the mold of the unholy result if Jackson and Mr. Harris had been capable of procreation. He looked to Derek. "Get up. Give me trouble and the kid definitely won't be healing."

At the threat, Stiles looked from Derek to the hunter. "Seriously? That's the road you're going with this?" he asked. "The _don't make me shoot the kid_ routine? Do you know how absolutely annoying that is? Not to mention, where's the imagination in that? You see a wolf isn't alone and just assume there's only one wolf to deal with?"

"Stiles... Shut it!" Derek looked like he felt a little better after giving the order; barking oaths was proven by science to help people overcome pain by nearly thirty percent, according to Stiles, and Derek obviously found it useful this once. He made it part way to his knees, looked down at the hole in his thigh and sagged back to the ground swearing again.

"Look! See? You want him up, let me help him," said Stiles. He tilted his head as he reevaluated the situation. "You're a hunter. Usually you guys don't miss the first time. With your kind, killing is involved. Why do you want him up?"

"My kind?"

"Yeah, the kind that shoot first and ask later if they shot what they were aiming for," said Stiles. "This isn't my first rodeo. I know hunters. What's the angle?"

"God you are annoying," said the hunter. Stiles blinked at him.

"Trust me. God, me, and the wolf already know that," said Stiles. He was stalling, waiting for Derek to heal, but it wasn't looking promising. "What I want to know is why you disabled my wolf?"

"He's not your wolf," said the hunter. Stiles huffed, intent to argue but suddenly not sure where he was going with that reverse-course.

"You'd be hard pressed to prove otherwise," was the best he could manage.

"Oh? They come papered now? AKC recognized?"

"Well, you showed up here looking for a Hale..." Stiles hunched a shoulder to dismiss it. Outside, a big truck engine noise rumbled into the yard and sat idle. Derek looked back at Stiles, the both of them worried.

"Fine. You want to help your buddy, go put him in the truck." The hunter stepped aside to clear the doorway without losing his very clear aim on Stiles.

"Why? Where is he going?"

"Summer camp in Lake Michigan."

"See, California wolves don't like the snow. He'll pass," said Stiles. All the same, he had started moving toward Derek. It got him shot. Freaking shot. He didn't notice at first until Derek looked back at him and put new effort into standing up. He looked to the hunter then, worried.

"Hey! I'll go. Just don't do that..."

That's when Stiles looked down and saw blood soaking a line across the front of his chest. It didn't hurt. It was an actual scratch that had torn his shirt and a bullet hole went cleanly through his jacket under the zipper to further illustrate how close things had come. Stiles stared at Derek, mentally stuck by the blood. The one thing that brought him back around was the smell of the hole in his jacket. That kicked the shock and he cleared the distance to Derek before the hunter had really processed.

"Aconite? Are you kidding!" Stiles shouted at the hunter. Derek stared at him, surprised, as Stiles helped him up apparently just so he could start tearing at the hole in his jeans.

"It went through, just go..."

"Smell my jacket. The bullets were bedded in aconite," Stiles said. Derek muttered a quiet "fuck" and stopped trying to shake Stiles off.

"You're good, for a kid," said the hunter.

"I don't like when people shoot my friends," said Stiles, bitter. "Let me help him."

"Longer you argue, the longer he is from help," said the hunter. "The way it usually works is you've got a six hour window. We still got a long way to go before a vet. You want to keep arguing?"

Stiles looked to Derek. The werewolf shook his head and caught Stiles' shoulder in a hint to get help standing the rest of the way.

"You're a matched set," the hunter said.

"You're funny," said Stiles, voice flat aside from a brief shake when Derek started to fall over because he tried standing on his own. Stiles hung on tighter and glared at him. "And you're brilliant. Stop thinking."

Derek glared back but it wasn't very effective. He was worried more than pissed off. The whole alpha thing tended to permanently fuck with how a person viewed the world and the people closest to them in it. It put Derek's worry for Stiles' life expectancy above his own. It was predictable. And it always fucked things up when Derek turned martyr instead of fought. Stiles tucked his face to Derek's, just to hide from the hunter.

"Don't you dare roll over because of me," he hissed, so quiet he could hardly hear himself. But Derek could. He tensed up, his hand on Stiles' shoulder tightening almost painfully. It took effort but they got Derek out the door - _bastard wolves and their heavy supernatural muscles_ \- and to the truck. By then though, thanks to the wolfsbane, Derek still hadn’t healed. He could stand on his own, but one legged men didn’t do great in ass-kicking contests as far as Stiles had ever seen. Before the hunters - there were two waiting at the truck, and the blond jerk following from the house - could get involved, Stiles jumped into the back of the waiting U-Haul and started helping Derek inside. They could wait. Bide their time. Derek would heal sooner than they expected; it was only trace amounts of aconite to deal with and a through-and-through wound. They would take their chances when he healed.

“Fine, he’s in. Let’s go. Get to this vet of yours,” said Stiles. “Or give me one of those bullets and a lighter and I’ll take care of this myself.” That got him laughed at. He crouched beside where he had helped Derek lean against the wall of the van. Derek looked over at Stiles, certain he had lost his mind probably. Stiles more or less felt like it, too, but he didn’t have a lot of options.

“What?” he hissed at Derek for the face. Derek lifted his hand and tapped at his chest, which probably meant he could hear how scared Stiles was.

“Go home, don’t argue,” Derek hissed back. Stiles had a front to maintain and smacked Derek’s shoulder.

“When do I not argue?” he replied. And then he was surprised by the hunters moving in to pull him out of the way as the other two, armed with their usual hunters’ tricks, went for Derek. There was a scuffle but Stiles realized quickly the light-saber batons hurt like hell.

He didn’t remember blacking out but he must have because he went from shaking and twitching radiating out from the burn across his ribs to being still in the black back end of the U-Haul as it bounced down the road. He got up on shaky knees and felt around on the floor in the darkness.

“Derek?” he said quietly. His response was a loud thump from one end of the trailer and he headed for it. Signs of life were signs of life. He tried again for verbal communication and was met this time with a knocking, a fist on wood. Since he was in a big aluminum box, the wood sound confused Stiles until his fingers jammed up against it. His hands skimmed along the wood, trying to figure out the size of it. It wasn’t a coffin, but it was big enough to shove a body in.

“Shit. You’re in there, aren’t you?”

The reply that time was a muffled attempt at talking but it didn’t make any sense. He could catch the general gist of the anger in the familiar tone though. Stiles' fingers felt nails and the criss-cross pattern of screws and no place for his fingers to pry. There was a combination padlock on one side that caught his hip as he stood in the moving vehicle.

“Yeah,” said Stiles. He sunk down against the front of the box and finally thought to check his pockets. Nothing. Keys, wallet, and most especially phone, all gone. “We’re screwed.”

 

***


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles wasn't the fighter of the pack. Allison could kick his ass. Isaac was just a pain in the ass. Lydia could level all of them with a look. As the truck kept driving, hours away from Beacon Hills, Stiles started to worry about when the gate would open up. Where would they be and what was he going to do about it? Nothing; the answer was he would do nothing.

It was cold in the box truck and for that they were lucky. Derek was miserable in a tinier box, hopped up on aconite and blood loss and probably still covered in purple lines. He had random fits where he kicked the box and started shouting but he hadn't broken out yet. Which Stiles interpreted to mean that Derek hadn't healed. The front of Stiles' shirt was sliced and soaked in blood but the scratch wasn't that deep. He didn't feel like he'd lost enough blood to worry about it. He was more worried about the wolfsbane exposure but he talked himself around on that. That would have been cleaned out by the mess all over his shirt. He was shivering too much to have let anything in; cold constricted blood cells and all that.

Roughly three hours into the drive, the U-haul made a few off-highway turns again and stopped. Derek started making a racket and Stiles just let him. He offered to help but couldn’t figure out if the noise Derek made was an affirmative or a negative. At least Derek knew he was still alive. So far.

It was hard to tell in the dark how long had actually passed. The truck sat still, aside from Derek’s box jarring the axis. Stiles finally stood up to move to the side of the trailer box to set his ear to the wall and listen. He could hear other trucks out in a large space, big engines echoing, brakes squealing, tires crunching over rocky pavement. His best guess was a truck stop, one of the big ones off the highway with the diners and the truck washes and the coffee outlets. Public. Lots of people.

“Crap, these people got sand,” he muttered to himself. If he put up any kind of fight here he’d have a dozen truckers at his back; he was the sheriff’s kid from a small county and truckers were good people who liked the whole small-county country-life... at least that’s what he’d heard. What if truckers really hated law-enforcement and their kids? “Crap crap crap.”

Stiles jumped away from the wall when the gate at the end rolled up, startling him. A bright - _very bright!_ \- flashlight rolled under the gate and Stiles ducked to hide his eyes until they adjusted. After the pitch black for hours, he suddenly couldn’t see. He squinted through it and backed himself into the corner when he heard one of the hunters crawl under the gate and get to their feet.

“Changed your tune yet, kid?” he asked.

“Uh... I’ve been pretty quiet for a few hours, so. Not sure,” replied Stiles. He waved toward the flashlight. “Can you, like, turn that off?”

“That answered that question,” said the hunter. He pounded on the wall of the truck, which only set Derek off again. And brought in another hunter.

Stiles kept his back to the wall and tried to anticipate the fight but that was hard to do when he could barely see. It was pitifully over before it began and he got slammed into the back of the trailer box, his arms wrenched behind him. He pulled one free until the gun was pressed to the back of his neck in a very obvious ultimatum.

“Guess what this is,” someone said. Stiles didn’t move, just put his wrist back in the hand that had been trying to pin it.

“Got it,” he said despite the fact that he had mashed his face into the wall trying to keep his neck away from the muzzle of a pistol. His hands were duct taped - _freaking duct tape_ \- behind him and then he was hauled away from the wall. He was shoved against the box with Derek in it and that effectively quieted the growling werewolf. It brought Stiles face to face with the hunters and now that his eyes had adjusted he realized how much he didn’t like the fact that these guys weren’t bothered enough to try to hide their identities. It said nothing good when the kidnappers weren’t worried about witnesses. The gun was waved around and aimed briefly between his eyes - _shit did no one understand basic gun safety guidelines anymore?_ \- to get his attention and it worked perfectly well. Next to him, the spare hunter was messing with the lock on the box.

“Behave,” ordered the one with the gun. Stiles nodded, on autopilot and distracted by people being in his space so soon after having just shoved his face into walls. He tried to watch the gun and the progress on the box-lock both but self-preservation was more demanding an instinct than hope. Then he was tugged away from the box and the lid lifted up. Stiles fully expected Derek to pounce but he didn’t. The hunter shoved Stiles forward enough to see in and he saw Derek wedged into the corner, pale and sick and completely the opposite of anything useful in an escape. He hadn’t shifted but bared his teeth as though he thought he had.

“Shit, Der-” Stiles’ oath was cut off by the should-have-been-expected press of the gun into his jaw and up. The snarl on Derek’s face faded from fear. Stiles was pinned by a hunter on each side, one right up against his back to help brace against the gun. Moving was not a safe idea so he held still and kept his swearing to mental diatribes. The hunter not immediately threatening him with a gun leaned his elbows on the box and looked in at Derek.

“We have two options here, Hale. You keep making noise and we ditch this kid somewhere in a hole to lose the trail you’re trying to leave. Or you shut the fuck up and we can clean your boyfriend up, take him along with us,” the hunter said.

“Not actually boyfriends,” Stiles managed, just so he didn’t have hunters and Derek both gunning for him in the immediate future. He was afraid to breathe and yet somehow he needed his vote counted. “But I am totally on board with not being ditched in a hole.”

“See, the pain in the ass annoying one is on board,” said the hunter, and Stiles mentally kicked himself for his pathological inability to shut up. It was no surprise then that Derek went quiet. He nodded his promise.

"Say it. You're going to sit and be quiet," the hunter pressed. Derek glared up at them.

" _Yes_."

That was the answer they wanted and the gun pulled back. The lid was shut and locked and Stiles was pat on the head like a good dog. He kicked the box then, frustrated.

"Now, _he_ just agreed to keep you," said the thug with the gun. "We didn't offer you the same deal, kid. You can get yourself thrown off a cliff just as easy if that's what you want."

Stiles scrounged up a glare for the threat but it wasn't worth much. He was shoved to take a seat on the box.

"You sit and stay. We'll get back on the road once you're presentable," the man said. Stiles huffed and glanced down at the bloody shirt. He wasn't about to point out they were leaving a pack of werewolves a very big clue with their surface generosity. Stiles was okay with not sticking when he moved. He was going to miss the hoodie though.

 

***


	3. Chapter 3

The bloody shirt was toast but they kept the hoodie when Stiles asked. They had lower standards than he did and he preferred the extra jacket. To them, _presentable_ meant a hooded sweatshirt with a pocket in front. They had bought it from the truck stop, because Stiles had called that one perfectly, but the sweatshirt just said _California_ across it, no useful location clarifiers other than that. They patched him up rather than let him take care of it himself; maybe they expected him to decorate the walls in blood or something for when someone found the U-Haul. Stiles thought about it, but there wasn’t enough to write his name on the walls. It took only some gauze and tape to keep the long scratch across his chest clean and another bandage for the burn left by the hunter-light-saber. The other difficult detail to the ensemble once it was all put together was that Stiles' hands were taped in front, through the sweatshirt pocket. He could walk around and be seen and nobody thought twice about it looking at him.

They let him out of the back end of the truck and walked him over to another truck. A big, professional moving company truck that said Peterbilt across the grill. That figured.

"Ready to unload?" the truck driver asked.

"Yep, swap cargo and let's get on the road," said the hunter at Stiles' shoulder, this one dark haired and bushy all over. Stiles stood silent, his heart sinking, as boxes were moved from the big truck to the little u-haul, and Derek's big wooden box was moved into the truck that looked like it was relocating someone's house. There were air holes in Derek's box, negligible but there, and Stiles got paranoid watching the box be buried back under mattresses and couch pillows. He stared, biting at his lip and swearing at himself. The hunter thought it was funny and let him watch. Then, truck loaded and rearranged, he dragged Stiles away from it and toward a nice, comfy, four door sedan that looked blue under the parking lot halogens but was probably green or red.

"What's going on?" Stiles asked. He had an ID on the truck Derek was in. He should take their chances and run. The neon sign in his head yelling _Stranger danger!_ had fried itself out hours earlier. If he made it to the diner and showed somebody the freaking duct tape on his wrists, they had to believe him... But _Derek_.

"Only one of you can ride in the back," said the hunter. "Not enough room in that box for the two of you, and there's no promises he wouldn't kill you in his current state. We're paid for live bodies, not dead ones, so that seems like a bit of a waste." He held open the door of the car for Stiles. "If it means so much to you though? You'll ride with him again once we get across the border and the truck clears the check points."

“The border?” Stiles was stuck, frozen. The hunter at the door arched an eyebrow, held his hands out to either side to mimic a scale.

“The border... or a hole in the ground? The border... or a really big cliff?” he said. “Those are your options and we’re just fine either way. You keep that big brute quiet and everyone goes home happy. Well, except you two anyway. But that’s not my problem.”

The annoying blond hunter leaned in the door over the drivers seat, his arms on the rooftop and his chin on his elbow as he watched Stiles slowly contemplate running for his life. The stranger grinned and Stiles stopped thinking about it because they could probably hear him thinking and he didn’t want to somehow prove them right in anything.

“Whatever this horror story you’ve got going on in your head is, it’s probably not that bad for you, kid,” the man said. “We haven’t had to kick too much sense into you. You play chewtoy for werewolves anyway. You can survive to the border if you don’t do anything stupid.”  
Stiles glared at him. He mentally went back to his plan to make a break for it, judging the distance between himself and the car and the man who held the door open for him.

“You get in the car in the next five seconds and I’ll tell you what your friend is headed for,” the driver said in an apparently friendly offer. Then he shrugged and stood away from the car, made to get inside. “Or you don’t and I run you down. Your call.”

The truck with Derek in the back lumbered past then. Stiles watched it turn out of the parking lot and head back for the freeway. He had a lot of non-options in front of him. Derek locked in a box more or less won as the lesser evil and Stiles ducked into the car, careful to keep away from the self-appointed doorman and the charged baton in his hand. That didn’t save him anything because he was then ordered to the center seat and buckled in, like a little kid, since he couldn’t reach the belts for himself. Stiles glared at the man for his captor’s sudden consideration for his safety.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Idaho, eventually," said the driver. "Or maybe it was Vancouver. I don't know."

"Vanc, I think. Think there's a trainer in Idaho though," said his co-conspirator as he got in to the front passenger seat.

Stiles' mental maps were tossed aside as he realized which border they had meant. "That's a long drive... You said we had a six hour window. That gets us into Oregon but..."

"That's what's known as a _lie_ , kid," said the driver. He was a smug bastard and Stiles didn't like him. He definitely didn't want to spend the next day stuck in a car with him. "You're good, with that aconite thing, but there wasn't enough in that to keep him down as long as we need him to be."

"Do you even know what aconite does to him?" Stiles asked, angry. "You can't just leave him in there to deal with it-"

"He's got enough ketamine in him to knock down a rhino," the driver said, talking over him. "That's what's wrong with him. Trace aconite keeping him hyped and injured, and because you were in there he's fighting the nappy-time shot we gave him back at his house. Seriously, you are the worst thing to ever happen to that thing. All the others by now are in lala land but he stayed keyed up all this time..."

"Thanks, man. I'm in the middle of a kidnapping crisis and taking completely unrelated blows to the self-worth. Awesome," said Stiles in return. He slouched in the seat, stared out the window to see if he could find the eighteen-wheeler.

"See, now that's the wrong way to look at it. Don't look at it as a kidnapping. You're just relocating. Your buddy has a nice cushy new job waiting for him. You'll be taken care of. Easy." The hunter thought he was clever. Stiles stared at him.

"What the hell do you mean?" he blurted.

"For the most part, your werewolf buddies? They do great in the personal security sector. Bodyguards, bouncers..." The hunter behind the wheel shrugged.

"Mall cops," added the passenger. “Mercenaries.”

"Especially your former alpha-types. They get wired different and don't change back completely. Makes them easier to train for the jobs," said the driver. "They pick it up faster, stick with it longer."

"Way better reflexes."

The observation had both men nodding to themselves like they had a clue what they were talking about. Stiles stared between the two like they had lost their minds..

"So we work for the brokers that put these jobs together. Recruiters. That's what we do," said the driver.

"You're not recruiting anybody," said Stiles. "You're shanghaiing people."

"Better than killing monsters as monsters," argued the driver.

"They're not monsters. They're human too," snapped Stiles. He kicked at the center console in front of him.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid," said the driver. "But you kick the seat again and you won't be sleeping so good for awhile."

Stiles fell silent, too busy in his own head to fully process the threat on top of the other news. He needed a minute to calm down anyway. It was apparently going to be a long drive, so he figured he could take a while and try to wrap his head around one piece of trouble at a time.

 

***

 

They stopped in Oregon just after sunrise, first for drive-thru greasy breakfast (which Stiles was able to feed himself once the tape was cut) and then a little later a rest area. The annoying blond driver, Kenny, saw Stiles to the "little boys room" and then to the truck. The other one had unburied the box and Stiles was sent in to go check on Derek for himself. At that point, Stiles had been awake for 24 hours and he was tired and jumpy and would have gladly crawled in the box to take a nap. Derek was out cold, but alive. Stiles grabbed a pillow and blanket from one of the piles of house-stuff and dropped them in, just in case he woke up. Then he grabbed another on his way out because, damnit, he was tired. Before he hit the gate of the truck though, the other guy Chuck met him with the duct tape again.

"Hands," he said cheerfully. Chuck had slept on the drive up. Stiles gave up his stolen blanket and scowled at Chuck as his wrists were taped up again. There was a little give this time because he wrapped a strip of Stiles' old shirt around first to save his skin, but it wasn't much. Then it was back to the car.

"So, how was your big furry buddy?" asked Kenny. Stiles was tired and couldn't tell if the taunt was rhetorical or not.

"He's asleep," he said, grumpy. Since Chuck had gone to the drivers side this time, Kenny held the back door open for Stiles.

"See? I told you," the man said. "Road trips go faster when pissed off werewolves go to sleep."

Stiles just ignored him and got in the car. Kenny caught him before he moved to the center though.

"Any last words?" he asked. That startled Stiles and he froze, trying to decide if he could get out the other side. Then Kenny held up the roll of tape and his intent became clear. Stiles relaxed just slightly while still scrounging up an angry glare. Kenny put a stripe of tape over his mouth before buckling Stiles into the seat.

"Nighty night," the man said, patting Stiles on the head. And he wasn't wrong. Despite the tape, Stiles passed out five minutes after they had gotten on the highway again.

 

***

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame winterwolf923 over at tumblr for everything.
> 
> \----

It was late afternoon when Stiles woke up. He was by himself in the car, the tape off his face even. He felt sluggish and jet lagged and blinked at the world more than saw anything. It took a minute to process the significance of being the only one in the car and another minute of trial and error to determine that he couldn't get his hands free to reach the seat belt. Annoyed, he started trying to pry at the tape, whatever points on it that his fingers could reach. Stiles let out a happy yelp when he managed to twist his wrists and pull up one corner of the tape; small victories were very important. He kept working at it, staring at the pocket that hid his hands and occasionally remembering to check for company. They were at the back of another big empty space that looked like a truck stop, and the truck they had been following wasn’t far off.

A _thump_ on the back window startled Stiles and he looked up to see his drivers let themselves into the car. His hands stilled and he curbed the frustrated oath. Then he smelled take-out food and changed his mind. He tried to twist the tape back down on his wrist so he didn’t get in trouble when they let him out to eat. Chuck and the really big knife twisted around from the front seat as Kenny sorted through the food bags.

“Do you want out?” he asked. Considering that question involved letting the man mess with a knife in his personal space, Stiles hesitated. He figured out how to get his hands free of the pocket of the sweatshirt, out toward the front seat enough that only the tape was sliced by the knife, and was soon prying tape away from his wrists. Kenny pointed to a porta-potty out in the middle of the gravel parking area.

“Bathroom’s there,” he said. “And when you’re back you can take food to your buddy in the truck.”

Stiles stared at him, didn’t quite believe he had processed it right. Then he was tripping out of the car because Kenny and Chuck had lost all concept of the whole hostage-taking-thing and he was not going to wait around to remind them. When he came back to the car, Kenny handed over a bag.

“Have fun,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.”

Stiles took the food and started for the truck but then turned back. “But the-”

“It’s open. He’s _behaving_ ,” said Kenny. “Take note.”

Stiles took note and figured it would be taken right to the nearest highway patrol office but he didn’t say anything. He figured out the latch on one of the big doors and let himself into the back of the truck. He hadn’t shut the truck door but it was heavy and closed on its own so it only cast so much light.

“Derek!” The quiet call was half worry, half warning; Stiles didn't want jumped if Kenny meant it that the box was open. He found the narrow trail between house-stuff and tried not to trip in the dark. “I got food. No guarantees it’s not drugged, but it’s food...”

He found Derek sitting on the box, cross legged and not looking like he was in any hurry to go anywhere. Stiles’ first impulse was somewhere between relief that Derek was alright and anger that he hadn’t left yet.

“Come on, man. Eat up and we’re out...” Stiles started unloading food onto the box next to him. “Are you okay? Like, really okay?”

Still in his Sourwolf McBroody mode, Derek snatched at the burgers in their paper wrappers and didn’t say anything. He shifted around on the box to drop his legs over the edge and tugged one-handed at his jeans.

“Healed,” he muttered. Stiles was getting a weird vibe and responded accordingly, adding weird to the weird by poking at the hole in the jeans until he was sure there was no hole in the person, basically calling Derek a liar. If it weren’t dark and he could have seen more than shadows, he could have trusted the answer, but under the circumstances, Stiles embraced his usual level of expected awkward.

“Fine. Good. Great even,” said Stiles, mentally catching up. “So we eat. And then we go. We’ve gotta be somewhere in Oregon. I don’t care if we gotta steal horses, we’re only a few weeks from home then.”

“Not exactly,” said Derek. He finished off one burger and went for another, inhaling more than eating. Stiles realized then he had been handed an entire bag of burgers and that the men who had let him wander off were actually pretty familiar with their jobs if they knew the wolf would be ravenous. Stiles took his own burger from the lot just to be sure Derek left him one.

“Okay... what does _not exactly_ mean?”

The anger in the cramped space was more stifling than the dusty boxes of books and Stiles let the question sit there, went back to his previous engagement of worrying for Derek’s health and their mutual overall life expectancy. He tried to take the hint and ate his food to wait Derek out; the guy was hungry, he was allowed to be cranky, and it was no small thing that he had been shot somewhere around 12 hours earlier. All the same, patience was not one of Stiles’ better known virtues. At least the burger wasn’t too bad. He reluctantly started hunting for fries if the current plan in operation was just _eating_.

Finally Derek stopped with the paper rustling and the chewing and stood up. “Watch your eyes,” he said. That was a confusing warning and Stiles squinted over at him, trying to pick up some visual cue to help him out. Then Derek turned on a camp-light on the floor at his feet and the small space lit up bright white. Cursing happened and Stiles forgot about his french fries for a moment.

“Son of a bitch...”

“What’d they tell you?” Derek asked. Stiles blinked at him as his eyes adjusted.

“That we’re headed for Vancouver, possibly Idaho, to train you up for a nice cozy job as somebody’s bodyguard. Or a mall cop,” he said. “Because alphas don’t really go back to being betas, they just lose power.”

Derek nodded. “That’s what they told me. And they weren’t lying.”

“Man, I don’t know if I want them to be or not, considering who the hell knows what our alternatives are if we’re in-”

“We’re in Washington, not Oregon. They said you slept through Oregon,” Derek said. “They said- Shit. Let me see your arm.”

“My arm is fine-” Stiles’ attempt to argue was met by an insistent glare from Derek. “Fine. Okay. Why?”

Derek’s response to that was to smack his hands along Stiles’ right arm, between shoulder and elbow, until he hit a spot that felt bruised and suddenly very angry. Stiles tugged his arm back. “What the hell, man?”

“Let me see it,” Derek repeated. He tugged at the hem of the sweatshirt for emphasis.

“It’s your fault if they start in about the boyfriend thing again for this,” Stiles muttered as he pulled the sweatshirt over his head. They hadn’t wasted money on a shirt, just the sweatshirt with the pocket, so when Derek caught his shoulder it was Stiles’ cool bare skin under Derek’s really-warm-hand. Stiles hissed at him for it, surprised. Derek pretended not to notice and turned Stiles toward the camp light. He ran his fingers over something that felt like a bandage - that Stiles knew should _not_ be there - and Stiles suddenly swatted his hand away to investigate for himself.

“What the crap did they do?”

Derek frowned at him. Not the most helpful thing. Stiles stopped prying at the gauze around his arm and shoved at Derek. “What? You know something. What?”

Derek pulled his shirt off over his head and shifted his stance so Stiles could see his arm in the light. Stiles saw a mark on his shoulder, rough and something like a burn still healing into a tattoo. It was in the basic shape of a dog paw, not very big. “GPS chip, under the skin,” Derek said, anger quiet under his tone. “Drives me crazy because I can feel it.”

Stiles tore at the tape keeping the gauze around his arm. It slid down and he saw a not-healed burn there, the same spot, size, and pattern as Derek’s. His wasn’t going to turn into a tattoo like Derek’s without professional help, though. And under that somewhere was a dog-tracker chip? The burned paw print was big enough to hide a USB drive so a tracker didn’t surprise Stiles, really, it just ruined his plans for the next few hours. There were some other lines that looked like chicken-scratch and Stiles squinted at it, twisted and raised his arm to try to get a better look. Derek caught him by the arm to hold him still as he got a look. He went pale and pulled the gauze back in place. Stiles started to argue - it was _his_ arm, damnit - and Derek just pressed the gauze in place to reaffix the first-aid tape.

“I’m... I’m sorry, Stiles,” said Derek, effectively silencing anything Stiles was ramping up to hit him with. It startled him.

“Wait, what?” he asked. “Since when?”

“I don’t know how to fix this yet. But I’ll figure something out,” said Derek. He shrugged back into his henley and was very good at not looking at Stiles as he tried to find anything else to do in a space barely big enough for the both of them. Stiles didn’t like it.

“Derek, don’t you-”

“I’m _not_ ,” Derek cut him off _and_ looked at him, so ultimately Stiles counted it as a win anyway. “I’m _not_ rolling over. I just don’t know what to do and until we can figure out how to disable a couple of tracker tags, stalling is all I can think to do.”

“So I just go hang out with those losers until the border like they said?” asked Stiles. “We hope they’re telling the truth and not just looking to ditch my body in another country? I want to go home, man. _Alive_. We hit Canada and we’re in trouble. I left my passport in my other pants, for one thing.”

“Then run. But unless they're better than the Argents they weren’t lying,” said Derek.

“Yeah, but please. Who are you talking to?” asked Stiles, his usual sarcastic behind a slight hope. “You think I haven’t looked into tracking chips? As much shit as we get into? I wanted one. For me. But they don't work. These things are short range, max. We get a hundred yards away and we’re home free.”

Derek looked at Stiles, guard down. Stiles nodded to encourage it. "We can do this, man. They're just dog chips. They store info, that's it. They're so small that they don't have the antenna to transmit to satellites. Local radio frequency only."

That seemed to restore some faith. Derek nodded, went after another burger as he thought it over. Stiles fought a chill and realized he was still only half in his sweatshirt. He struggled into the thing and huffed. "So we're good? Same page?"

Derek nodded. "Same page."

The truck door opened then. Stiles and Derek exchanged a concerned glance, both of them suddenly wondering how loud Stiles' voice was in the crowded truck.

"Time's up," called Kenny's voice as the man made his way to the back of the truck.

"What happened to fifteen minutes?" asked Stiles warily.

"Local radio frequencies happened to it," said Kenny. Stiles backed into the box in an unconscious effort to avoid the consequences of being snooped on. Kenny nodded, sufficient verification of the concern. "And just for the record? My employer isn't the _Mexican government_. These chips work. Maybe not FDA approved, but trust me. They work. Not _my_ first rodeo, boys."

Stiles opted not to argue. Kenny reached out and caught his shoulder to pull him away from the box. "Time to batten down for travel. Hale, in the box," he said. "And you, hands in the pocket."

Derek looked from the hunter to how his grip shifted on the back of Stiles' neck. Stiles would have taken any cue at all from Derek, fancy GPS chips or not, but he didn't attack in the small space. He opened the box and climbed in. Stiles jumped when handcuff bracelets closed around his wrists. Kenny winked.

"You were getting the upgrade before you started running your mouth. Nothing personal," he said. He stepped aside, waved Stiles toward the doors out. "Wait up front. Don't try to jump down or you'll break your neck."

Stiles peeked in at Derek, saw him trying to arrange the pillow and blanket before Kenny shut the box lid and locked him in the dark. Stiles almost preferred the idea of the small space in the box to being stuck in the back seat listening to bad radio signals of bad music and Kenny and Chuck's efforts at conversation. He wasn't sure if he or Derek had the more miserable few hours ahead of them.

 

***


	5. Chapter 5

Road trips with strangers, especially the kind who taped his mouth shut, were officially on the list of life-experiences Stiles never wanted. It was like an anti-bucket list he kept in his head of places he never wanted to visit and things he never wanted to do. Getting his ass kicked by geriatric cancer patients had been pretty high on that list, but four hours in a car with his mouth duct taped bumped it down a notch.

When they stopped for a restroom break, the first thing Stiles did when they let him out of his cuffs was work the tape off. That experience then joined the list. They laughed and he glared.

"Just so you know, you were dead wrong about the effects of the full moon. Also, wrong about the capital of Idaho. Also, very wrong about what constitutes good music," Stiles rushed out once he could talk. "But mostly do not even mention werewolves again because you're wrong."

"You've been holding that one in awhile," observed Kenny. Stiles nodded.

"Hour and a half," he replied. "Speaking of ... Where's the bathroom?"

And that was how Stiles once again was allowed out of the car unsupervised. But rather than stay in the bathroom of the rest area, he climbed out the window. Derek had told him to try running. And this was their last chance before the border. Stiles had seen an all-night diner not much more than half a mile up a frontage road to the highway. Even if all he managed was a phone call there before he had to run again, it was better than Canada.

It was dark out, around eleven pm, and not much of a moon. He actually counted that as a lucky thing because it made it harder for anyone to see him in his generic-gray sweatshirt. He stuck close to trees and backyard fences to stay invisible.

Stiles was winded and shaking from nerves alone by the time he stepped foot in the brightly lit diner's parking lot. He crept between cars, checked the lot for anything familiar, and then went inside. It was instantly warm and everything glowed from the old yellow lighting. There was no waitress, just a sign that told him to seat himself. Stiles ducked around a corner to the bathrooms, hoping for a pay phone but it had been removed. Not a good sign.

He took a seat at the bar around the kitchen to wait for help. An employee at a diner was a safer bet for an ally than anyone just sitting around in a booth. All he needed was a cell phone, just one text, and he could cut out and run again. But Stiles had only ever pick-pocketed his dad and that didn't take much skill. That left him with human communication and the kindness of strangers hidden amongst the dangers of them.

"California boy?" asked the waitress when she appeared. Stiles had zoned out tapping his fingers on the bar, jumpy and trying not to hit the door running, so he hadn't seen her.

"Uh. Yeah... Me and a friend ran into some trouble-"

"Damn, way out here? There's nothing for miles..." The waitress frowned at him and put a coffee mug in front of him. Stiles latched on to it out of habit but then stopped.

"I don't have any cash on me, I just was wondering if you've got an office? Like, with a phone, I could call someone..."

"Shh, I'll get this. Drink up, I'll go get the manager," she told him. "Office is just back there but he keeps it locked this late."

Stiles nodded and accepted the free coffee. He drank it straight and made a face but caffeine was caffeine and he needed it to calm down, even out a little.

The door opened, ringing its merry bells, and Stiles looked back. Kenny spotted him right off and didn't look too pleased about it. Stiles clung to the edge of the bar and wrapped his shoes in the stool rungs. He wasn't going anywhere unless they dragged him. The effort at sending the message by drinking a little more coffee failed because his hand shook. He nearly lost all nerve when Kenny sat down on the stool next to him. The hunter pulled his car keys and cell phone out and set them on the bar in Stiles' easy reach.

"You do coffee, huh? Should have said something sooner," the man said, quiet and almost friendly. Stiles didn't know him well but he knew enough to recognize when he was pissed off.

"When I'm not stuck in a car I live on it usually," said Stiles. "Coffee is vital."

"Obviously. Funny choice of words, kid," said Kenny. Stiles paled and tried not to think about what he was certain had been a threat. But at this point, Kenny's _existence_ was a threat so his words were just icing.

"We should go," he said quietly. "I'll ride with Derek the rest of the way."

"You bet your ass you'll be riding with him," said Kenny. "But drink your coffee. You want food? Don't want to put the establishment out for their troubles."

"Just coffee," said Stiles.

"I want fries," said Kenny, "So just sit there. Drink your coffee and behave."

 

***

 

When the waitress and the manager got back out, Kenny sold them a line about spotting a couple of kids in need and they bought it. They saw the phone next to Stiles and assumed he had used it, like Kenny told them. The man flirted with the waitress like a cad and Stiles ended up with three free cups of coffee and some pie. He had lost his appetite but that didn't mean much; he had a burn on his arm, who knew what kind of drugs in his system, and a bruise on his neck from the muzzle of a gun. He had faced down some scary stuff lately but regular people were another realm that scared him. Stiles was dealing with pirates, and not the fun kind. He had made his play and by pure dumb luck, he lost. Now if he screwed up again, it wasn't just him who could lose. Stiles forced down the pie and talked when spoken to, silently bottling up anger.

He got close to snapping once, tired of listening to the con-job, but Kenny put the phone in his hand and said "Let me show you something."  
He then talked Stiles to an app on the phone that popped open a map. Locations were flagged with different colored markers. Kenny pointed to the different dots.

"This dot here is the phone in your hand," he said, tone light. "And that one in front of it is you. So guess what that one is over there?"

Derek was, according to the map in Stiles' hand, roughly a mile away at the rest area.

"A bit more of a range than expected, huh?" Kenny asked. That didn't make Stiles feel any better at all.

Still, he had a phone in his hand. He had witnesses. He closed the app and started to hunt the touch-screen phone keypad. Kenny let him, like it was a dare, a game of chicken; would he take the phone before Stiles got the call initiated? Stiles won that challenge. Kenny watched, not happy. It was a test and Stiles was willfully failing it because a phone in his hand was familiar and he could do damage with any tech in his hand.

But that was the problem: he could do damage. And it wasn't all in areas he wanted to damage.

"Stilinski." His father's voice picked up after two rings. He sounded stressed. Like his kid had been kidnapped because of werewolves again. Like his only family left was missing with no promise of return. And Stiles realized then how stupid his game was. His dad was in another state. He couldn't even hop a plane and beat them to the border. He couldn't help. Asking him to would only hurt his dad more. Not giving the phone back was going to get Stiles hurt. He blinked at the bar in front of him, refusing to admit to crying. Deciding he was damned either way, Stiles took a deep breath.

"Dad?"

"Stiles! What's going on? We found-"

"Yeah, I know. Look, I'm at this diner... I-I stole somebody's phone to call you. I can't keep it."

"Yes you can!"

"Dad! I'm okay! I'm with Derek so I'm okay! I just don't know when I'll be home. I'll be home when I can but I don't know-"

"Stiles-"

"So I love you and stop worrying. Just tell everyone we're okay. And we'll see them when we can. I gotta get the phone back where I found it."

"Don't you dare-"

"Dad!" There was a pause and Stiles swore under his breath because he had screwed up. There was one thing that would make the call okay and his dad being a cop, being angry, was definitely not that thing.

"Son... Okay. I love you. Be careful. Whatever it is..."

"I gotta go." Stiles made himself end the call. He put his head down on his arms on the bar and hung on to the phone. Kenny let him. After a minute he sat up and slid it back.

"I called his cell," Stiles reported. "If he hasn't called back then you probably don't have to burn it."

"Ha!" Kenny said, mild. He changed a few settings on his phone before putting it back in his pocket. Stiles put his head back down.

"Can we just go?"

Kenny dropped a twenty on the bar and stood up, pocketing his keys noisily. He'd had his fries. Made his point while he was at it, Stiles figured. Now they were just wasting time.

"Want a lift back to your ride, kid?" he asked, on a script for the waitress. Stiles just nodded and stood up. Kenny left cheerful enough but the smile was gone the second they got to the car. "Take the front seat," he said when Stiles headed for the back. Stiles warily followed orders.

"I'd say you just hit a whole new level of stupid, kid," said Kenny. "But it baffles me that you're smart enough to already know that."

Hands once again locked in the pocket of the sweatshirt, Stiles scowled at the dashboard. "That's pretty much my life."

 

***

 

It was dark so Kenny pulled the hood on to Stiles' head for him and taped his mouth again before escorting him to the truck. Chuck waited by the gate, annoyed. Stiles kept his shoulders up and glared back at him, going for defiant. Chuck just opened the door for them and helped Kenny get Stiles up into the back.

The camp light was on in the back and Stiles gladly followed it. He just wanted it over with. He didn't care if that meant sitting in a box with Derek. At least he liked the company better.

Stuck in the narrow aisle of piles of house crap, he should have expected the kick to the kidney but for some reason hadn't. Stiles stumbled into the box with an _oof_ and Derek kicked back from inside.

"Stiles?" he asked.

"Shut up," barked Kenny. Stiles was a little distracted getting turned around before he got kicked again. There was no room in the space. Kenny blocked the only way out, unless Stiles wanted to bury Derek's box by trying to climb out over everything else. He was stuck; he couldn't fight in handcuffs, he couldn't move anywhere other than the box, and he couldn't talk his way out. If he survived, someone was teaching him more than basic self defense.

Stiles was, for the most part, used to fights now. Usually he watched from a safe distance, or he had Scott to intervene, or he was just fighting Scott in the first place. Kenny didn't play nice or fair at all and Stiles suddenly had lungs that burned from bruising blows and a hand-print around his neck before he knew it. Derek kicked at the box but didn't break out and Stiles just leaned on it for support. When Kenny backed off, he added another kick and the pain in Stiles' thigh almost sent him down. He caught him and kept him up, pressed into the side of the box.

"You don't make the rules, kid. I let you get that run for home out of your system because there's just a few hours left. You're going crazy. I get it. I told you, I've been through this before," said Kenny. "But you didn't make it, you lost. You're going to keep losing. You fought to keep him, he wants to keep you, that's what you have. Get in there and get used to it."

Ribs aching, Stiles stayed where he was hunched over the box until he figured out that he was supposed to acknowledge the order. He managed a nod and Kenny hefted him up, helped him prop up against some of the furniture crowding the space. He unlocked the box and stood by the lid, sparking baton handy. He was expecting an attack and Stiles almost hoped for one. Even if he was slow to run, they could steal the car and get home. When the lid opened, Derek was crouched and ready, but Kenny cheated and held the baton to Stiles' chest in the small space.

"Settle down!" Kenny ordered, fingers poised over the light-saber trigger. Derek backed down, teeth flashed briefly but that was it. "Now your buddy's hurt, Hale. Because he was _stupid_. The next few hours, you get to keep him from being stupid in return for helping him out. Or not and we drop you both in the ocean. Your call."

Derek nodded. He blocked the lid up and out of the way as Stiles headed for him. Kenny had to help him into the box, and that hurt like hell, but his pride survived somehow. When he looked over at Kenny, he saw that the man's jacket had slipped in his effort to help. Under his shirt sleeve was what looked like a tattoo on his arm, the bottom edge of a paw and the same chicken scratch Stiles had seen under the burn on his own arm. Kenny straightened up and waved them into the box.

"Not a sound from the two of you for the next few hours," he said as he reached for the lid. "Don't kick the box, don't talk, don't nothing."

Stiles caught Derek’s attention, looked to the light on the floor. He was hurt and scared and Derek knew it. Maybe the light would make being stuck in a shared wooden potential-coffin a little less likely to add to the panic he already felt. Unsure if Derek caught on, Stiles settled into a corner anyway. From inside it looked like, if they sat cross legged, there would be just enough room for the both of them, and he had absolutely no problems trying to make himself as small as possible. Maybe it would keep his ribs from caving in on him.

 

***


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some ridiculous fluff-ish-schtuf with the angst.
> 
> NOTE: Potential trigger warning for Panic Attack in this chapter. 
> 
> \----

When the lid shut the pair of them inside, the camp lantern became almost too bright again. Derek crouched beside it, attention split between where Stiles had curled into the corner and the lid being locked in place outside. He stayed still, listening for the truck gate to be locked up next. Even Stiles heard the sedan start up outside. The big truck was next. Only then did Derek look to Stiles. He was mostly-nice about taking the tape off and stuck it carefully to the shoulder of Stiles’ sweatshirt.

“You want to tell me what in hell that was about?” he asked. Stiles shrugged into the wall and gave a negligible shake of his head. If he hadn’t figured it out from what Kenny had already said, Stiles didn’t want to have to go into it. Derek huffed a sigh and caught at Stiles’ leg. “Come here. Neither one of us want to stare at each other for the next hundred miles.”

“But we want to cuddle?” scoffed Stiles. It almost seemed difficult for Derek to scrounge up a scowl, but he got a gold star for trying. Stiles reluctantly unfolded and let him insist and arrange until he leaned back against a werewolf body-pillow. Even with the camp lantern wedged in the corner next to Derek, there was almost enough room for them to stretch their legs that way. It was a little more comfortable as long as Stiles could ignore the fact that he was sitting _between_ Derek’s legs. There were certain things he had always just assumed that stressful situations and fresh bruises would make him immune to but instead, now, Stiles found himself hyper-aware of. And that was not helped at all, not one bit, by the casual not-thinking-about-it way that Derek tucked his arms _under_ Stiles’ sweatshirt to rest skin-against-skin just below his painful ribs.

“Oh jeezus,” muttered Stiles as some of that pain faded. He relaxed as he remembered Derek could pick him up and throw him - exactly why that was a _relaxing_ association he would never know - and sagged, letting Derek take a little more of his weight as pain was pulled away. His usual self started taking his brain back bits at a time and Stiles was seconds from starting to fidget. “Uh. So if you keep this up? Re-apply tape or I might talk.”

“Pretty sure you’re the only one I’ve ever heard of who would consider _lessening_ pain a torture technique,” said Derek. Stiles was only half-sure Derek was amused by the observation so that’s what he told himself and went back to being tortured.

“I tried to run and got, like, a mile away,” he said after another round of quiet between them. “You said to try it, so I did. I just... he showed me the trackers. He can check them on his phone. He had me look it up myself, shoved it in my face, gloating like that. So I called his bluff and... sorta... I mean, he gave me a phone right there, in front of witnesses, so I called my dad. And it was just a bad idea for so many reasons.”

He wasn’t crying but he was damn close, his vision blurring on the wood - he was certain now that the box was ash - just above his shoes. So he rambled.

“I told him I was with you and we’d be home when we could. I fucking told him I was okay,” said Stiles. He was disgusted with himself. “He just wants to fix it and I told him not to. Like, I don’t want him to even try just because I know he’s going to and it’s just... I mean, _Canada_. I didn’t tell him that, the jerk was sitting right there staring at me getting pissed so I didn’t mention _Canada_... we just- we can’t go home.”

They were quiet for a minute or so after that, and Stiles was stuck in his own head on the loop replaying the bad ideas as they had all happened. Derek’s arms shifted, slightly tighter, and he set his chin on Stiles’ shoulder rather than rest back against the wall.

“So... same-page then? Don’t do that again,” he said. Stiles was careful in how he nodded.

“Same page,” he replied. He stared up at the box lid inches above him, watched the walls to be sure they didn’t creep in on him, things that were important when he was anxious. When the lack of talking got to him again he fidgeted and then apologized. He could practically hear the Hale eyeroll happen for it.

“They gave me coffee,” he admitted. “Like, three times.”

“Oh shit,” muttered Derek. Stiles laughed out loud from the sincerity in the oath; it hurt his ribs and gut but he laughed anyway. He sobered again when his attention wandered to the wall off his right elbow. He remembered the angry burn there, and then the partial tattoo he had seen on Kenny’s arm. He asked about it. Derek just nodded acknowledgement that it existed, that Stiles wasn’t crazy.

Stiles didn’t give up. “What’d it say? Under it, it had the lines...”

“A name. Looked like Branson or something.”

“So do you think...”

“Yeah,” Derek said, rather than let him finish. “Chuck’s a wolf, the other one isn’t. Some kind of team thing. It’s probably why you’re still around.”

Stiles listened to the rumble of the truck beyond the box, the shifting and moving of the junk piled up all around them. The thought poking around in his head finally wouldn’t let him keep it to himself anymore. “The lines on my arm don’t say Stilinski. There’s not enough of them.”

For a long time, Derek didn’t say anything, which was an annoying confirmation all on its own. Stiles elbowed him for not answering the question.

"Tell me they paid attention when you yelled at me and it says Stiles," he ordered. Derek didn't say anything. Stiles fidgeted again. It was suddenly awkward. His shoulder itched from the top of the burn to his elbow and his hands were locked in the sweatshirt pocket so it only became weirder when he lifted his hands to rub at it. “They can’t do that,” he muttered. “Just scratch it off or something. It’s not mine, shouldn’t be there.”

Still half tucked in Stiles’ sweatshirt, Derek caught his arms and tugged them back down. “Last summer, you backed me, fought for me and the others. You were Hale pack,” he said. “When I had one, anyway.”

“It’s your family name though,” said Stiles. “The Hale to my Stilinski.”

“Pack is stronger than family,” Derek reminded him. “So it’s just... a different kind.”

Stiles was stuck on the more tangible, immediate idea that he had someone else's name written permanently on his skin and felt like Derek was missing the point. He rolled his eyes and sulked. “That doesn’t give me - or them - wholesale rights to stamp your name on things- I mean, me.”

“No, what gives you wholesale rights to my family name is the fact that you were pack and you’re still here right now,” said Derek. “You should be at home, but you wouldn’t just leave. Somehow the name means more to you than it does to them since they showed up looking for a downgraded-alpha Hale and you stuck around to defend one. It got you in trouble. Maybe this way it’ll keep you safe for awhile.”

There was hardly any volume to what Derek said, his mouth close enough to Stiles' ear that he could still clearly hear. More than that, he felt the words at his back and the way Derek was careful resting his arms over bruises and pain, like he could tell where the punches had landed but didn't want to let go until he was sure Stiles heard him. It was important but he would only ever say it once.

If Stiles didn't know how to process being declared family, he had no idea how Derek had managed to put it into words in the first place. It was complicated more by the fact that Stiles felt he had somehow missed the adoption paperwork months earlier, which only meant he and Scott had done it right when they were kids, drafting their own and spelling things out in nice, neat crayon. He had even less of a clue what it meant to be pack because he had everything he knew about _family_ cluttering how he treated his friends. Sorting _pack_ out from that tangled mess of string was going to take hours. He could take Derek's word for it, but he still wanted to know what that line felt like, or if there even was one for him between family, pack and friends.

"Look. What's mine is mine. I don't like it when people mess with that. Especially if they mess with my friends," he said. "So I'm cool with it there if you are."

Relaxed again, Derek nodded. "It says Hale."

"Pack bros," said Stiles. He shrugged. "I'm going to add to it. Real letters. Like, a massive tribal wolf thing..."

"You fainted when Scott tried to get a tattoo," Derek said.

"I got this one..."

"Yeah, because they drugged you and you slept for eight hours..." The sourwolf seemed amused and Stiles narrowed his eyes at the too-close ceiling.

"Seriously could do without the negative vibes, man," replied Stiles. "You can take those right out to your own box."

Derek let out a sarcastic huff and Stiles felt pain ebb away again from Derek's magic wolfy pain-killer trick.

"Nope, nevermind," he said quickly. It probably sounded slightly obscene from the relief in his voice, but he didn't care. "My box. You stay in my box."

 

***

 

The border was an obvious change in the pace of the terrible, horrible, no good, very long day.

There wasn't much traffic so it was a rather sudden slow down. Stiles started to ask if they should make noise anyway, say screw it and refuse to play the game if the truck got searched. It never came out though because he started to full-on panic just over the indecision. What kind of a choice was "potential immediate death in a box" versus "potential death in Canada at some point yet to be determined" when it still crashed into Stiles' usual stubborn refusal to be ordered around? If they made noise, would it work? Would it get the border patrolman who investigated killed? Would it get Stiles killed if it didn't work, or both of them? But goddamnit, Stiles wanted to be at home, not in Canada.

And then, _BAM_ , panic happened. In a tiny box. With a big werewolf pillow. And a probably-stolen sweatshirt. And handcuffs. And pain. And claustrophobia. Stiles couldn’t get his hands out of the damn pocket to keep the walls from closing in on him. It was too hot, too stuffy, he wanted to run. There was no such thing as calm.

“Stiles... breathe...” Derek said aloud, no apparent concern for the fact that the truck gate was rattling a warning of company coming. Stiles sat up and tried to curl over his knees, fighting with the sweatshirt until he ripped the hem to get himself crouched. When Derek figured out what he was doing he set a hand to Stiles’ shoulder to help him balance until he could rest his back to the wall instead. He didn’t let Stiles shrug him off and Stiles almost fell over trying to get away. Derek rolled up and into his space.

“What’s the song stuck in your head?” he asked, a whisper. Stiles huffed and, when Derek sat back again, tried to think past the small space and the impossible breathing. He didn’t have a song stuck in his head. If he did, he could feel normal maybe. Something to think about that wasn’t how much he needed to run home-

Stiles looked over at Derek suddenly and tried to think of a song. Any song would do. Something monotonous. The bastard stuck in the box with him didn’t even talk, just mouthed words that looked suspiciously like “It’s a small world after all...” and Stiles narrowed his eyes, confused as he tried to sort out exactly what Derek was saying.

And then the damn song was stuck in his head. And then he realized Derek was still mouthing lyrics. That’s what his brain got stuck on: Derek Hale singing _It’s a Small World_ to him while they were stuck in a box. If it had been Scott, he would have been fine, but this was Derek Sourwolf Hale.  Stiles let out a squawk and then had to bite down on his sweatshirt-covered hand to keep from laughing. Everything about it hurt and he couldn’t laugh or they’d end up in the ocean but suddenly that was all Stiles wanted to do.

And that’s when he realized he was breathing again.

Feet braced against the wall just over Derek’s knees, Stiles sagged against the box, relief mixed just enough with the fear to force himself to relax. Derek smiled back at him and that just set Stiles off again. He reached past Derek to turn the lantern off to keep _that_ from happening again, because it honestly hurt. Derek caught his hand against the floor under his own and helped out, pulling some of the pain.

It took a little teamwork, but they survived the border checkpoint. Just barely.

 

***

 

The last thing Stiles really remembered was the noise of light city traffic fading off to the regular thumps of a long bridge. The sound and simple exhaustion ganged up on him to put him to sleep. He woke up still in the box and on Derek, slumped with the man's ribs for a pillow. Stiles had done his usual sleeping sprawl and slid down the wall to the floor, so he was half on Derek's side with his handcuffed arms trapped between them. The shoulder that wasn't on Derek was rammed into what felt like the camp lantern and the wall of their box.

"Ow. Shit." Stiles wasn't sure how to move that wouldn't hurt or embarrass the hell out of at least himself. He tried moving his hands so all the blood rushed back and _shit_ became a mantra.

"It would be a very good plan to switch four-lettered vocabulary for awhile," said Derek. He sounded less than comfortable. Stiles felt less than comfortable. He refused to think about what Derek meant. Instead, he switched to _goddamnmuthafreakinsunuvabitch_ because he needed more than a thirty-percent pain tolerance boost and the bigger words had to be the key to harnessing the magic of swearing.

Everything hurt worse when he got to what felt like sitting upright. The world was pitch black so the only thing he had to rely on was gravity, and that was definitely not his friend at the moment, so it couldn't be fully trusted. Stiles shoved back against the wall of the box and tried to stretch his back.

"Nope, I don't care. They can shoot me," he decided. Even his voice sounded bruised.

"Don't plan on me putting you out of your misery. I'm not that hungry yet. And there's not enough room in here for the mess," said Derek.

" _Mess_ is a four letter word. As is _food_ ," replied Stiles. "Off limits."

The boundaries of the conversation thus clearly mapped out, they stayed mostly quiet. Derek didn't hear anything outside the truck, no cars, nobody moving. He reported evergreen trees and somewhere with water, but that was all he had to go on. Stiles had even less.

It felt like forever passed before anything changed. Stiles dozed off a few times. Sleep didn't fix the leftovers of two fights in twenty-four hours and he complained about that. Derek offered to reapply the tape if he wanted something else to complain about, proving that he was more irritable than his usual cranky self. Stiles almost started talking about waterfalls and leaky faucets but he figured that had too high a likelihood of backfiring on him under the circumstances. He stuck with campfire songs and marching chants because they were good for morale.

Finally the truck doors opened. Derek moved around at the noise, probably to one of the small notches in the wood to see out. Stiles remained where he was since the werewolf was the only one of the two of them who could see in the dark. He felt Derek get up to a crouch, his feet under him, one arm braced against the wall on the other side of Stiles for balance.

Then someone was messing with the lock on the outside of the box and Stiles wanted to cheer. He didn't. But it took work. Light spilled in when the lid opened.

"Which is it first," came Kenny's voice above them. "Bathroom or breakfast?"

"Bathroom," said Derek and Stiles both. Stiles still had to blink to let his eyes adjust so he was distracted when Derek pulled him up to his feet.

Kenny looked the pair of them over. He nodded to Stiles.

"You look like shit," he said cheerfully. Stiles pulled a hand out of the sweatshirt's kangaroo pocket just so he could flip the man off.

"I got my ass kicked and dragged to Canada in a box," replied Stiles. "What's your excuse?"

Kenny's only response was to pull the stripe of black duct tape off Stiles' shoulder and press it back over his mouth. He looked to the pissed-off and glowering Derek.

"He's your responsibility," Kenny advised. "Nobody here wants to put up with his shit. They don't have to, either. I promise you they won't. You get to watch him."

Derek looked a little honestly worried for a second but that was only because Stiles knew him and his stupid face too well to miss the twitch of his eyebrow. That was not a hesitation that was allowed to stay.

"Baffzoom?" Stiles was still muffled, even by tape that had been blessedly loosened by sweatshirt-fuzz. Kenny lifted a shoulder.

"You're the idiots still standing in the box," he told them.

 

***


	7. Chapter 7

It was just a house. A really freaking huge house, but a house all the same. There was no tour offered up. Stiles muttered a few more swearing mantras as he limped along behind Kenny, tried unsuccessfully to glare holes in the back of the man's neck. Stairs up to the third level of the house were just unfair and insulting to Stiles' pride. Chuck caught him by the back of the neck, surprising the hell out of Stiles when the guy pulled away some of the motion-limiting pain. Definitely a wolf.

The third floor was a row of rooms with suspiciously heavy doors. There were a few open places, but Stiles didn't have a chance to investigate. He and Derek were pointed in to one of the rooms. There was a bathroom in there so they didn't argue. Chuck and Kenny blocked the door to the hallway and waited. The blanket and pillow had been liberated from the box and Kenny tossed them on the bed. Derek finished his business and it was Stiles turn to investigate the bathroom. Generic rich-person bathroom, granite everything, and a matching shower stall. The towels in the room were monogrammed with the pretentious letters _AI_. Stiles washed his face with one and forgot about it by the time he got back to the main room. It was empty. The door was closed (locked) and Derek was gone.

"Oh this is bullshit," muttered Stiles. So he started poking around the room. Books on built-in bookshelves were taken off the shelves and stacked on the floor or on the desk, looking for dust and bugs and cameras because _why the hell not_ mixed well with _paranoia_. Every drawer of the desk was opened and checked but there was actually nothing in them. Not so much as a pen. He checked the big window then. It was three stories up so couldn’t make the jump and survive, but the roof was gabled around it so maybe it could come in handy. Basically, the window was useless; it faced the bright sunshine and had a green plant on the sill just to mock everything.

"Seriously?" Stiles flicked one of the cheery green leaves. He gave up then. He left the books scattered in their piles - all of them were old and hard-bound and nothing remotely interesting in them - and sat on the edge of the bed. His arm hurt. His neck hurt. His ribs hurt. And he was hungry. Stiles sulked and hugged a pillow for support to help ease some of it. Left alone too long in the room and he started tugging the string out of the pillowcase because it was brand new and stiff and everything about the room annoyed him.

When the door opened finally, Derek was let inside with food on a fancy plate and a scowl on his face. They were locked in again. Stiles was suddenly faced with pancakes and eggs and bacon; he didn’t argue when Derek handed it over but he was no less confused. Derek settled into the desk chair in a hard-edged sprawl that indicated one pissed off werewolf.

“What’s going on?” Stiles asked. He poked a fork at the eggs. “Is this stuff drugged?”

“No. I had the same downstairs,” said Derek.

“If we’re going to have the run of the place all of the sudden then I can get my own stupid food," said Stiles.

“They said you’re not allowed out. For now,” Derek spoke over his complaint, no less frustrated. “Everyone we ran into is a wolf, or smells like one. Whatever the koolaid is in this place, they all drink it.”

If it weren’t for the fact that he was hungry, Stiles would have thrown his plate at the door to be sure someone out there heard his opinion that they were all full of bullshit. He was instead unnecessarily mean to the already dead eggs on the plate.

“Did you find out what the hell this place is at least?” he asked around a mouthful of food. “Like, see anything to explain what the AI is for on the towels in the bathroom and the stamp in some of the stupid books?”

Derek’s annoyed frustration was entirely at the situation around them then; Stiles had never seen him roll his eyes and twist his mouth to convey quite that level of disgust before. “AI. Alpha Incorporated. They’ve got a logo on pens and business cards. A wolfsangel inside the Greek letter.”

Stiles sagged, expression flat. “Please. No.”

Derek nodded and started scratching a nail across the desktop, idle and angry at once.

“So what else. Anything?” Stiles’ question was met with a shake of the head. He wanted to throw his plate again. “Come on! We’ve been here like an hour! They had all day yesterday... Nothing on why we’re here?”

With a huff, Derek waved to the plate in Stiles’ hands. “That’s what I got from the place so far. Food. Your meals get catered. Someone made a very bad joke with a logo and the wolves around here wear it on polo shirts. We’re now on the exact same page about this place.”

“Except you’ve _seen_ it, and I’ve seen the stairs,” returned Stiles. He shook his head and chewed on a rolled up pancake like he was eating a carrot. “I don’t care what their rules are. I’m not staying in here twenty-four/seven. They can stuff it.”

Derek leaned forward, arms braced on his knees to try to stare Stiles down. “Just settle down...”

“You’re pissed. I’m allowed to be pissed, so don’t give me that, Derek.” He tried to glare back but realized it was slightly ruined by the pancake flapping around in his hand. He set the food back on the plate and then pointed at it. “You get this, right? Why I’m not allowed out, why you had to go down to get the food...”

"Yeah, I get it. So next time, I let you starve, because they're playing games that we already knew were being played?" Derek asked. "So they want me on their team, they think a hostage dependent on me is going to do that, and they're not exactly wrong. We have a problem here then because I'm not going to put you at risk and everyone knows it. What am I supposed to do, Stiles?"

Despite his state of frustration, Stiles had no answer to that. He stared at his plate, morally opposed to the fact that he was still hungry.

"I promise not to leave you in the dark, alright? When I know something, I'll tell you, and that's all I can promise," said Derek. "This isn't like before, you're not Scott trying to get his shit together. You don't have to tell me the risks of you not knowing what you need to know. The problem is _already_ here."

The promise was contemplated over the remainder of the pancakes and a few shifty glances watching Derek for signs of being placated. And then it hit him.

"No, dude... It _is_ like before," Stiles said slowly. "It's just another alpha pack. It's in the stupid company name. Alphas Incorporated 0r alpha pack, it's just legal semantics."

"Okay..." Derek considered it and eventually nodded. "Former alphas brought in to a business for bouncers and mercs for hire. There's a handful here so it's probably safe to assume they're all former alpha too."

He didn't seem as concerned by it as Stiles was. The teen flailed a hand around as though he could somehow drive his point home without having to say anything. Derek didn't catch on. Stiles tried again.

"The last alpha pack wanted Scott to kill me... I'm seeing a problem being a _hostage_ in an alpha pack when former betas negate the _former_ part of the _former-alpha_ requirement." Stiles got stuck trying to sort out which part of his conclusion he found most offensive. He shoved the pillow he had used as a tray and the empty plate aside and leaned forward to put his head in his hands out of pure frustration. "I should be freaking out more than I am. My life is warped."

Derek stared at him, offered a half-hearted shrug of a shoulder. "Well, according to your theory, it won't be that warped for long. Yours says you're dead before the end of the day."

Stiles narrowed his eyes at Derek. "Not helpful."

"They just made me bring you _food_ , Stiles. They're not wasting food on a Dead Man Walking, that's all I'm saying. Until we know what the hell we're doing here, we have _nothing_ helpful. So stop making it worse," said Derek. "We'll just sit here, pissed off, until we have answers. There has to be something. Then we reevaluate and then we _leave_."

"I don't want to sit here," said Stiles.

"I didn't want to leave Beacon hills," replied Derek. "They didn't take a _poll_."

He reached out and caught the empty breakfast plate, put it on the desk behind him. "Sleep," he ordered. "Or give up the bed."

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Screw you. Sleep if you wanna sleep,” he said, waving to the space between himself and the wall that amounted to more than enough room for a sleeping person. “But I’m going to sit here and bitch about being treated like one, so good luck with that.”

Challenge accepted, Derek abandoned the chair and crawled onto the bed. He stole the pillow from Stiles and buried his head under it at the other end, effectively stealing all pillows in the room. Not impressed by his new roomie’s disregard for his lack of personal freedoms, Stiles shook his head and scowled at the floor. “You suck,” he informed the werewolf.

“You wish,” came the muffled response.

Stiles cut a glare at him over his shoulder. “In your dreams maybe.”

“Not actually boyfriends,” Derek reminded him. Accepting that round as a loss, Stiles went back to making faces at the floor.

 

***

 

The waiting was killing Stiles slowly. He had crawled up onto the desk to try to investigate the window, but it didn't do him any good. He opened the window, removed the screen with no problems at all, and was able to sit on the gable under it. However, the only way to get down from there was to jump to the ground, or climb a nearly vertical rooftop on either side of it. Derek and his claws could make it, but Stiles would just slide to his death if he tried. The roof provided fresh air and the illusion of freedom, though, so Stiles ended up outside in the cold as often as inside. He fully expected someone to yell at him for it but they never did.

It was dark before anybody showed up to see them. Stiles had just started to pester Derek again for the hundredth time - that wolf could catnap all he wanted but he was not getting away with actual sleep while Stiles was pissed off - when the door beeped, announcing keycards swiped in locks on the other side. Stiles stood up from his sprawl on the floor and Derek sat and waited at the end of the bed.

"Time for dinner," announced Kenny, holding the door open. Stiles dodged past Derek; he had made up his mind there would be no more catering. To his surprise, Kenny didn't even try to trip him. He stayed out of Derek’s way and then locked the door when he was out.

“You know where you’re going?” the hunter called over to Stiles. He hesitated then and looked back, figuring it was safe if he had gotten as far as he had with no real reaction. Stiles looked to Derek and shook his head; he didn’t think either one of them knew where they were going, although Stiles knew the stairs would get him outside. That wouldn’t do him any good when all he had seen from the roof was acres of trees.

“No...”

“Then hold the fuck up,” Kenny ordered. “If you’re hungry, don’t waste the energy.”

“I didn’t want locked in the room again,” said Stiles. “Get used to it. If the policy is locking me in, expect a run on the door any time it opens.”

“That is an excellent way to get yourself killed, kid.”

Stiles shrugged as Kenny and Derek caught up, Kenny trailing and Derek being very obviously not in a hurry to counter Stiles’ Sonic the Hedgehog impression. “So far I’m still alive.”

“Watch your step on the stairs then,” said Kenny. Derek glared at him for the threat, which Stiles mentally preened over for a second, but Kenny didn’t seem to care. He waved them ahead and followed them down to the first floor. Nobody tripped, intentionally or otherwise.

 

***

 

Scared and out of his depth didn't make Stiles stupid. He was far from home, his only help being a former alpha with martyr-like suicidal tendencies. Leaning on Derek for help and guidance ran the risk of his alpha-streak getting him killed, and Stiles would have to follow after because Kenny wasn't kidding when he said that nobody would put up with him. Stiles got some dirty looks in the kitchen just for existing. He kept angled to Derek the whole time they waited in the informal buffet line for food, just so everyone knew he wasn't on their menu. Kenny patted him on the head as an 'I told you so' and Stiles snapped at him for it.

"Get used to it," returned Kenny. "Wolves are tactile creatures."

"You're not one," said Stiles. He held up a hand to show off the lack of restraints. "And look, ma, both hands... So try it again and I kick your ass next time."

Not at all intimidated, Kenny stared him down. " _That_?" Kenny asked. He snuck a hand out and poked at Stiles' bruised ribs to call his bluff and Stiles dodged sideways into Derek's back. "That ass-kicking was called a warning shot, kid. Incidentally, the only one you get. Here they don't have the policy. They'll send the dogs out after you here. They won't buy you fuckin' coffee because you'll be dead."

Derek seemed tired of it and turned around to shove a plate of BBQ chicken at Stiles, effectively putting himself between the two. The stare-down didn't last long, Kenny winning when he pointed them toward the table. "Go sit down and shut him up."

Stiles stayed quiet, surprised to be in the kitchen, surprised by the unexpected not-actually-hostile attitude from Kenny, surprised by the glares he got from the people in the AI polo shirts eating further down the long table from him. It was like the worst part of high school, accidentally sitting at the cool kids' table under the supervision of a yard narc making sure nobody bullied the losers away. He had spent hours by himself since they left Beacon Hills but Stiles had never felt that alone and vulnerable. He picked at his food, wide eyed and alert but shoulders still hunched with his elbows on the table. It was noticed; Derek rested his arm on the back of Stiles' chair, since he wasn't using it, and kept himself angled to comfortably block his easy view of the other end of the table. It put his back to the idiots in the polo shirts but he didn't seem to care.

Kenny sat down across from them and promptly chided Derek for not paying enough attention to his food. "Eat," he said. "You're still down here because the boss wants to see you later. If it's still on your plate when we leave, you're out of luck for the night."

That did the trick and Stiles tore through his food fast. Derek was a little more mannered and relaxed about it. After a minute, he asked Kenny, "Where's the other guy? Chuck."

It was answered with a shrug. "Working."

"Why aren't you with him then?" Derek pressed. Kenny smirked at him over a forkful of salad.

"I'm not his babysitter."

"You're apparently ours," muttered Stiles. Kenny pointed his fork toward the other end of the table.

"They're your alternative," he said. Stiles dropped out of that conversation quick before he could accidentally say something to make his life actually worse. Derek kept his focus on Kenny.

"But he brought you into this, right?" he asked. Stiles kept his head down but paid attention. Kenny stared at Derek for a long time, thinking the question over. Then he shrugged, nodded.

"Long story short, yep. That's right."

"Same as us?" asked Derek. "Or did you volunteer?"

Kenny shrugged, the picture of disinterest. "Look, I don't have answers for you. I'm not some glimpse into the kid's future, five years on down the road. We told the boss there was a _problem_ , he told us it wasn't, and the kid is now here. So I don't know what the Hales are so useful for that your buddy isn't dead yet. Don't assume I'm your friend because I'm your babysitter."

No fan of being discussed as a corpse, Stiles glanced over at Derek. If Kenny was lying - which Stiles assumed was his default conversational setting - then the werewolf would know. What he saw was a stoic Derek with his guard up and Stiles found a window to stare out instead.

"Already knew that," said Derek, cold. "Don't pretend to be. You were tired of Stiles the second he said anything. So how about you don't talk or touch anybody, just play the tour guide you've been trained up as. That way he and I can eat in peace rather than look forward to smashing your head into the table."

For some reason the threat silenced the room. They now had the undivided attention of the other end of the table. Stiles started looking at the pile of chicken bones on his plate, contemplating how to turn one into a shank. That impulse wasn't helped at all by the way Kenny just stared over at Derek.

"Yessir _massa_ Hale, sir. Just don't kick my ass, _sir_..." The high voiced mockery settled into a mild annoyed tone, cold and uninterested. "Because you'll find out damn quick I can take you down as hard as any of the others could. You know exactly _nothing_ about how this place works, so don't go thinking I'm an easy target like your friend here. It won't end well for anybody."

"Then don't provoke me and everyone gets along fine," said Derek. Kenny looked from Derek to Stiles, apparently labeling him the provocation, before nodding to accept the truce. He pointed to Derek's untouched dinner.

"Shut up and eat. We've got shit to do soon," he said. Derek considered it a moment before finally obliging. Stiles turned his attention to his plate and started scraping a few bones clean with his knife. Stupid Kenny laughed but didn't say anything about it so Stiles kept it up.

 

***

 


	8. Chapter 8

The shank was left on the plate since Kenny had seen him make it. The walk to the second floor was quiet anyway, no one going out of their way to bother them, so Stiles didn't immediately miss it. He was recharging. He had 'the boss' to deal with now and didn't want to let that opportunity go to waste. Besides, Stiles kicked ass at boss fights usually and in the game so far, the only skills the bad guys emphasized were being quiet and waiting, (admittedly not Stiles’ strong suits) and thinking it out (but he was better at that) from whatever angles he could get to from a small box. Recharging was the obvious prep for this boss battle. (As long as the food wasn't drugged. And he _had_ been pissing off Derek all day, so there was a high likelihood his food had been drugged just so Derek could sleep at some point. Crap.)

It started out like all the boss battles: escorted into the room, expecting to be announced, with the boss nowhere to be found just so they had to wait. The office was three times the size of the room Stiles had been cooped up in all day. Everything was bright and open in this room, a contrast to the cluttered kitchen and dining room. Every paneled surface painted white to reflect the big windows. Bookshelves mounted in the walls to show off leather-bound texts and a few stuffy statues and art pieces; everything had a designated place and stayed there. The couches and chairs on one end were spaced far apart, close to the windows to collect the sunlight, but there was nobody in them.

A massive desk sat a little further off, angled to the windows like the other furniture. The chair was turned around. Classic bad guy entrance: the swivel chair. Stiles crossed his arms and huffed, casting a glare at Kenny just because he was the only one handy to blame for the theatrics.

"Come on, really?" he muttered. He looked over at Derek and sobered a little at the suddenly pale expression on his face. He stared at the chair too, already picking up bad news. Stiles' mouth clicked shut.

"Hale's here," Kenny said to the back of the chair. "Do I wait or come back?"

"You wait," the chair said.

"Shit," said Derek. "I knew it was a mistake letting you loose."

Stiles blinked, confused. Derek knew this guy? He started to open his mouth to say something but the chair turned then. Stiles started as a familiar face turned toward them. Instead of the steepled fingers expected in the swivel-chair entrance, this one had a book in his hand and thick framed glasses on his face.

"Derek," the man said.

"Deucalion," said Derek. He didn't smile back at the man's greeting. Stiles just stared, slack-jawed. The alpha-werewolf behind the desk took his glasses off and set them on the book on his desk. He waved to the chairs across the desk from him.

"Have a seat, boys. We'll have a chat."

"We've already had a few of them," said Derek. "Nobody ended up with what they wanted."

"Actually, I rather think I did. And then some," the alpha said. "Thanks to your clever schemes in the mix I can _see_. A fact for which I am very appreciative, Derek. Do not overlook that."

Derek went quiet, still watching the alpha with open distrust. After a long, tense moment, he carefully pushed Stiles toward one of the two chairs in front of the desk. Stiles took the hint, surprised. It wasn't completely surprising when Derek used it more to send a message than agree to the meeting; he angled himself between the alpha and the former Hale-pack (not-a-wolf) beta and leaned his hands on the desk.

"I somehow doubt that. Anything from you is a set-up, Deucalion," he said. "You told me yourself you learned from the best."

"And my score with Gerard Argent is hardly settled, the body count in fact was raised," returned Deucalion. "You are your mother's son, Hale. You restored my sight. In exchange you still have your young beta. You and I are on an equal field. Well... For the most part."

" _Canada_. Not equal," blurted Stiles.

"Shut up," said the alpha. His attention stayed on Derek but the order was for Stiles. "From what I’ve seen, you had no particular fondness for the California education system anyway."

Stiles started to argue but then had to reconsider, allowing a surprised shrug. Derek shifted to aim a glare back at him. "What? He's not wrong..."

Derek rolled his eyes and looked back to the alpha. "Fine. We're even. You went to a lot of effort to declare a truce. Now give me a phone so I can get the two of us home and you and I can stay out of each other's way."

"That's not why I had you brought here," said Deucalion with a smile. "Merely a helpful side effect. Sit, Derek, and we'll discuss."

"No."

As Stiles looked on, the two stared each other down without flinching. It took a toll on Derek as the alpha's eyes started to fade to red, his mouth started to twist into a harsh smile. Derek strained against himself, muscles shaking, nails clawing into the desk. He started to wolf-out and looked like he was going to break his back.

"Derek... it’s a chair, man," Stiles said, careful and concerned. He was unarmed and a chair made a shitty weapon against an alpha if he got challenged by a cornered beta from the wrong pack. "This is seriously the wrong fight to pick."

It seemed to sink in and Derek suddenly backed down. He disengaged and retreated to the chair, crashing into it more than sitting. The alpha smiled at him for it, eyes still red, watching Derek shake in his skin as he tried to get himself back under control. Reminded forcibly of his own panic attacks as he watched, Stiles crouched at the edge of his chair, unsure how to help Derek. All he had was distraction, and the thought that if it worked for panic attacks... Stiles looked to Deucalion then and did his thing, rambled like he did best.

"Okay, so we're here,” he said, starting off with the conclusion. “You've got your pack wet-dreams all fulfilled up here in the wilds of Canada... But I don't get what you need Derek for. Scott's the collector's piece. The whole true alpha thing, right? That's not Derek. What's he-"

"The Argents are the problem, Stiles," said the alpha patiently. "They are alive."

"Allison's got nothing to do with her psycho grandfather-"

"Gerard Argent is alive. If the rest of the family line won't take care of the poisoned limb then the tree itself must be cut down."

“You really like losing, don’t you?” asked Derek. He still looked like he was fighting something but Stiles guessed it was more internal this time rather than Deucalion’s alpha-manipulations.

“Not as a rule, no,” said Deucalion mildly.

“Then leave the Argents alone. The only Argents left are allies. You don’t attack allies and keep them.” Derek was done with the alpha and it was obvious in his voice and his words. Deucalion stared back at him, considering the advice he had actually asked for. It was promptly rejected. Given that Deucalion had just wiped the slate clean between them, Derek’s advice wasn’t only referring to how the alpha treated the _hunters_. Stiles slouched back in the chair because he could suddenly see the rest of his short life lived out in a tiny freaking bedroom because a couple of hardheaded werewolves were as bad at taking orders as he was. Doom, death, and certain destruction. That’s all that was left.

“That is where I believe you’re wrong, Derek,” said Deucalion. “Or at least partially so. You’re _here_. You might as well stay until we have a more cohesive plan in place.”

Stiles saw that Derek was more invested in the glaring match than higher-level thinking at the moment, because there wasn’t much way for him to argue the alpha who had clearly made up his mind when Derek was too busy trying to keep said alpha out of his brainspace.

“Oh my god.” Despite the fact that he was naturally crunchy and would probably taste good with ketchup, a very frustrated Stiles dared meddle in the affairs of werewolves with all the determination he could muster. “You want a plan? That’s it? A plan and we go home? ‘Cause I can totally get behind a plan to kill Gerard Argent. I will admit his murder to my father, I don’t freaking care.”

Deucalion acknowledged Stiles but just barely. The alpha finally did the steepled-fingers that Stiles had been waiting for since walking into the room but it didn’t make him feel any better about his life, nailed prediction or not.

“I want the allegiance of the Hale pack. What’s left of it,” said Deucalion.

“Nope,” said Derek.

“Really you’ve got the wrong guy for this one,” added Stiles, a subtle effort to dig back into Derek’s frame-of-reference. He was really worried Derek was making angry-decisions instead of thinking, and since the man was essentially speaking for the both of them, that was a problem. He looked from Derek back to the alpha. “Vengeance is Peter’s _thing_. He would be _all_ over this. In a heartbeat.”

Deucalion tilted his head but his attention stayed locked on Derek. “Peter wants vengeance because he feels he has something to avenge. He did not carry the death of his pack as an alpha. No guilt. No responsibility. Derek, though... he took on that kind of power at a young age.”

The _expected_ source of trouble was the werewolf side of the equation. Exactly no one expected the scrawny, bruised and battered teenager to react first. Including the scrawny, bruised and battered teenager. Even if he wasn’t a wolf, Stiles reacted to a red rage and knew what set him off. He went from on-edge and contemplating an actual murder with actual, rational intent to profit off of it, to half over the desk with intent to punch an alpha werewolf in the face.

Derek caught at him but the broad desk kept him from anything actually dangerous. Deucalion was definitely the worst possible alpha to challenge and Stiles had done it without a second’s consideration. Before he could open his mouth to outline all the various reasons he suddenly had for seeing the alpha in hell, Derek had him looped around the shoulders and a hand over his mouth to keep him from doing it. Deucalion laughed at him, quiet and almost polite because he wasn’t trying to set Stiles off at all. Kenny was less amused, ready to haul Stiles from the room like any good bouncer at a bar.

“Hale! You got him?” Kenny asked, the other puny mortal in the room suddenly stepping in to save an all-powerful alpha. Stiles felt Derek nod, realized how close he was when he felt Derek’s jaw move against his own. His request to be let go, calm, relaxed, if slightly out of breath, was muffled by Derek’s hand and did no good. So he bit him to get the message across and then repeated himself, meeting much better results. Derek unlaced his arms from Stiles' and let him find his feet again but Kenny didn’t go back to his spot on the couch across the room.

“Well. That was entertaining,” said Deucalion, the only one still seated. “It seems I struck a nerve.”

“Seriously?” Stiles narrowed his eyes at the man. “Don’t go down that road again. I want to go home some time this century.”

“Your assumption of your own life expectancy is endearing,” replied Deucalion. “But I think for now the two of you have had enough excitement for one day. Anything more and one of you will be dead. Believe it or not, that is not the intent here.”

“Yeah, and your intent is a problem. We’re going to need a door number three,” said Derek. “I’m not signing on to your pack and I’m not helping you kill the Argents.”

Deucalion smiled at him and reached calmly for the glasses and book he had abandoned earlier. Behind him the sun started to set, so he reached to a lamp on the corner that Stiles had barely avoided in his dive moments earlier.

“Door number three is one floor above us and down the hall,” he said. “Kenny will show you out.”

Too busy kicking himself for having nearly gotten at least himself killed in the goriest possible fashion, Stiles didn’t bother shrugging Derek’s hand off when the wolf caught him by the back of the neck to steer him out of the room. Back to the upscale dungeon cell that looked like it was going to be home for awhile if they couldn’t figure out how to get around an impasse with a psychopath.

 

***

 

The door was hardly closed before Derek was growling at him. Stiles slouched on the edge of the bed and ignored him, an arm wrapped around aching ribs that had been just fine until Derek had to haul him off an alpha.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking he was going to set _you_ off and we were going to get exactly nowhere anyway," said Stiles, lying. He was actually thinking to beat the man's face in on Derek's behalf for mentioning the Hales deaths, but Stiles wasn't about to bring that up again. Derek stared at him, eyebrow raised.

"You know I heard that, right? You're worried about me keeping _you_ in the dark and then, what, forgetting that I know when you lie?" he asked.

"No, I just don't get what the hell it matters what I was thinking," said Stiles. "It's done. I reacted and I screwed up. But the whole issue doesn't mean anything when we've got exactly two options to get home and neither one is actually possible. If we're stuck here waiting for hell to freeze over, you _know_ that's not going to be an isolated incident."

"We're back to the original plan," said Derek. He shook his head like the original plan was perfectly reasonable. "We stall and then we leave."

"Except we don't know where we are," said Stiles. He counted off the problems as he saw them on his fingers. "We have their word that we're in Canada, and a whole bunch of trees in the back yard. And how long before you snap, pacing a tiny-ass room? I'm going to go certifiable 51-50 in no time. I'm going to crash in like three days, tops, because I had my own personal pharmacy at home just to keep up with you people lately. And that's going to suck hard to come down from, just FYI. And school... There's school. I would like to _pass_ junior year, man. If we're here, pissing off a pack of alphas, I'll be lucky to see my eighteenth year on the planet... And Scott? I mean, come on, he's going to be dead in like two weeks without us and it will take that long to get home if we have to walk. I am not a long distance runner..."

That had to be evident enough because the fast, hushed ramble ended on a gasp when Stiles' stress caused him to briefly forget how to breathe for the end of it. He looked over at Derek, completely sincere. "That's not even the top of the iceberg, man. I got more..."

"Yeah," said Derek, frowning. He crossed his arms and nodded toward the door. "I know. But I'm not fueling that man's vendetta when it puts Allison and Scott at risk. Scott won't let anybody near Allison's family, _especially_ me."

"Chris Argent won't just hand over his own dad," said Stiles. The idea to him was reprehensible, but at the same time he wasn't sure; he loved his dad more than anything, but he was also comfortably certain his dad wasn't a psychotic serial killer. There was no telling with some people how situations could change.

"He won't," confirmed Derek. "But that doesn't matter because I'm not signing on to this AI crap. I have a pack and I trust Scott more than... this one."

"He-who-must-not-be-named?" Stiles blinked at Derek's obvious refusal on the alpha's name.

"Not now, Stiles," said Derek. He was snappish and crossed his arms. Stiles scrubbed at his face, annoyed.

"So basically, to sum up? I'm some kind of failed peace offering in a scenario where peace is not actually an option, so we're just roomies until they feed me to the actual _wolves_. At which point you seek to avenge your fallen pack and the bad guy gets his way anyway."

Derek was silent, glowering at the wall as the new perspective was offered. It was nearly a minute before he even moved.

"To be fair," Derek finally said, quiet. "There's not a sovereign nation on this planet that would accept you as a peace offering for anything."

Offended but slightly proud of the signs of a potentially healthy coping mechanism in the otherwise rage-prone werewolf, Stiles squinted at him and then flipped him off. Derek sat down next to him, his shoulders slumped.

"I don't have an answer to this," he said. He glanced up at Stiles but mostly stared at his hands resting on his knees. "Everyone gets hurt. If I can keep it away from the rest of the pack? That's what I'm going to do."

A small voice in Stiles' head insistently whined ' _But what about me?_ ' And he ignored it because he already knew the answer. Scott was his brother. He was tied to everything Stiles knew of family. There was no way Stiles would drop a vendetta on people Scott considered family when it could hit Scott. It could hit Scott's mom. It could hit Stiles' dad just as easily. He couldn't do it. He wasn't mentally wired for it. Stiles wiped at his face again, frustrated by his own conclusion.

"Fuck this," he said. "I hated school anyway. We'll just stay here."

 

***

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

The bed was shoved in the corner just like Stiles' had been since the Nemeton. At home, it was how Stiles kept the walls from moving on him when he woke up from nightmares and panic hit. Here, it was just how the furniture was set out. Even though there was more than enough room for the both of them on the bed, Stiles wedged himself into the corner created by the mattress and the wall when he finally crashed that night. He had gotten used to it at home and he was too exhausted to care. Derek didn't say anything and just took up the other edge because he expected Stiles to sprawl, no matter how much Stiles insisted he wouldn't. They were dirty and bloody and plenty warm so they slept on the comforter instead of under it, with just the blanket from the truck for Stiles if he wanted it.

In the morning, Stiles woke up wedged into the corner created by Derek's shoulder and the mattress. So it turned out that they were both right. At least there weren't any nightmares to really make the night memorable; no dreams at all. Stiles just moved back to the wall when Derek was dragged down to fetch breakfast. Neither one of them felt hungry and Stiles was still exhausted.

"Breakfast," Derek announced when he got back in the room.

"Screw it," replied Stiles, face still smashed in his pillow. Derek sat down on the edge of the bed again. He stayed quiet, so Stiles fell asleep again. Derek dropping back to the bed, on his back to scowl at the ceiling, woke Stiles a third time and he decided that Derek was a heathen intent on revenge for the day before. He blinked back to sleep.

"You reek," Derek said. Stiles flailed in frustration.

"Screw you," he replied. He punched his pillow and tried again.

"Not without a shower first," returned Derek. For some reason, probably relating to virginity, Stiles was suddenly awake. He hadn’t actually heard that. He was pretty sure he had been asleep when Derek spoke and the only thing he was positive about was that Hale was a smug bastard. When Stiles had pestered him the day before, he at least wasn't smug about it. Stiles shoved up from his pillow and scowled at Derek distrustfully. The werewolf smirked like he had won something and handed Stiles a plate off the desk. Then he sat, lazed back against the headboard, and started in on his own breakfast.

"I'm eating and then I'm sleeping," Stiles declared.

"There's clean clothes. You shower and change first or you sleep in the bathroom."

"What?" That was news that seemed unlikely and Stiles honestly wasn't sure if he was awake after all. Derek nodded toward the bathroom.

"Apparently we're in the kiss-up stage already. So, clothes," he said. He plucked at his shirt and Stiles blinked, suddenly realizing Derek had changed.

"No monograms even," Stiles said. Derek's smug expression darkened but he shrugged it off. Stiles caught a whiff of blood and sweat mixed with eggs and suddenly shoved his plate back at Derek and scrabbled off the bed.

 

***

 

Nothing happened that day. Stiles stayed awake by putting all the books he had taken off the neat orderly shelves in the room into reverse alphabetical order and then back where they belonged. The alpha-order was his own private joke and Derek just rolled his eyes at it. Around noon, when they were sure lunch wasn’t actually in the offering, Derek snuck out onto the roof. Stiles stayed at the window, perched on the sill with his feet on the gentle slope of the roof just under it. Derek clawed his way up to the ridgepole. Stiles was stuck with his narrow vantage point; if it was East, he could see it, as long as it didn’t require getting too close to the edge. Derek’s view from the top would be three-sixty so at least one of them could get the lay of the land.

Once he couldn’t see or hear the wolf’s progress on the roof, Stiles retreated inside and contemplated renovations to the space if he was going to be stuck in it. He couldn’t punch an alpha when the room got too cramped, and there wasn’t much to work with, so the more passive aggressive options had to be thought out ahead of time. Stiles wasn’t in a hurry, he just wanted to be sure he got it right when the time came.

About an hour later Derek was brought back in through the bedroom door, smug. His shoes and pants were wet from snow and his shirt had a big splash of mud across the front. Stiles had his hoodie on in the room and just shook his head at the werewolf’s internal temp regulation.

“If I had done that, I would have been sent back in here in a body bag,” Stiles observed as he waited for the report. Derek didn’t acknowledge the comment with more than a frown.

“There’s a long driveway that goes back to the road, cars crammed nose to tailpipe,” said Derek. “And a lot of snow everywhere else.”

“I was kind of trying to ignore the snow part,” said Stiles. He scrunched his nose and sucked his teeth, imagining the pain of trying to run from wolves in snow in a Far-North November. “Yeah. I don’t like the snow thing.”

“So. We get a key,” said Derek. He settled on the edge of the bed to look at Stiles. “When we’re out, that’s what we look for. If you see a chance, take it. Because we get nowhere without a car.” He scratched idly at his arm, a sufficient reminder of why they needed a car.

“We get nowhere without me sprouting wings or being let out on a less-supervised basis,” said Stiles. The reminder was apparently necessary because Derek’s expression darkened. Stiles held up his hands, flexed and waved his fingers. “No claws.”

“Right,” said Derek. He seemed to sink a little further into the bad mood, a drastic flip from when he had walked into the room, and Stiles frowned back at him.

“Yo buddy, what’s up?” he asked. Derek shook his head and shrugged it off. He motioned to the window.

“Not a great idea after all,” he said. Stiles nodded, reluctant.

“Yeah,” he said. He perked up slightly. “But hey, I’ve got another one.”

Derek arched an eyebrow at the turn-around. Stiles nodded, a smirk on his face.

“If you’ve got nothing better to do, d’you wanna help redecorate a little?”

 

***

 

It worked out that Derek's excursion out into the forest cost them dinner that night. That one hurt. Stiles was already detoxing from everything he was used to at home, predominately sugar and caffeine and a few medications that he tended to abuse more than use correctly anyway. He was pretty sure it was the sugar and caffeine withdrawals that hurt the worst. The freedom to raid the fridge was sorely missed.

As retaliation, they set up Stiles' passive-aggressive redecoration plans against the wall beside their cell door. Using claws, Derek carved a line in the shape of a window out of the drywall and made a sizeable hole under the fake canvas painting that hung in the center of it. Tomorrow, when the house wasn't so quiet and people were gone, they would dismantle it, piece at a time, quietly, just to see how far they could get with the project.

In the meantime, Stiles drank water from the bathroom sink like it was going out of style to fight being hungry. It wasn't the best plan but it was what he had to work with, besides a headache and general overall feeling of _blah_.

He decided to sleep it off, power-nap his way to breakfast, and crashed into his wedge against the wall. Derek sat at the desk and read a book. Not that Stiles was a hit with the social elite, but he hadn't gone to bed at sundown since he was four years old, and his mental calendar told him he was giving up way too early for a Friday. Stiles fell asleep to the sound of pages turning and the thought that they were in for a very boring prison life.

 

***

 

The early bedtime backfired on Stiles. He woke up at midnight. Breakfast was still hours away. And, for a bonus, he woke up Derek. He apologized and the glare he got in return was more because Derek was Derek than because Derek was mad. He had an image to maintain.

Meanwhile, Stiles didn't plan on ever caring about an image again, since it didn't matter given he was wolf-kibble in the near future anyway. There was a certain freedom to knowing anything he did had a high likelihood of getting him killed because if it all ended up the same, why not do it? Unlimited reward for a very stable, predictable risk. Not that he was rushing toward that risk faster than he had to, but he had to move to stay alive. All of which Stiles rambled quietly about, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, with Derek silent and not-sleeping on the pillow beside his.

"Is this philosophizing going somewhere, Stiles?" Derek asked, surprisingly polite. "Or can I sleep now?"

"How long do we have before he loses it?" Stiles blurted. "I mean, are we better off jumping out the window? We're playing chicken with a werewolf. An alpha. Who incidentally is a touch psycho..."

"Honestly?" Derek asked. He looked over at Stiles and met his eyes, no glare, no censure, just what Stiles took to be the same worry he felt. Stiles nodded.

"You just answered your own question. We have no way to get ahead of a psycho," said Derek. "He'll play nice until he decides he doesn't want to. Then..."

"Then we're screwed and I'm dead," said Stiles. An odd look crossed Derek's face. The same reluctance to say something as Stiles had noticed from him earlier. "What?"

"If you're not dead, you're turned," said Derek. "He wants a pack."

"Nope. Still don't want it," said Stiles.

"Deucalion is literally the last person to care," Derek pointed out.

"If that happened, he'd have me killing them," said Stiles. "I saw what Peter did to Scott, man. I saw what Deucalion did to you. I don't have a prayer at-"

"I get it, Stiles," said Derek. Stiles propped himself up on an elbow and shook Derek's shoulder.

"Promise me that if I get bit or something you won't let me turn," he said. "I mean it. I don't want to be a little stealth nuke werewolf sent in to maybe kill my fa-"

"I _get it_ , Stiles," Derek repeated, his tone harsher as Stiles' dropped off. He turned his glare to the ceiling then. Stiles still stared at him, his brain catching up with his mouth, sorting out what he asked Derek to promise. He was trusting the man with a lot in one breath and accidentally pissing him off in the next.

"Just for the record," said Stiles after a minute. "I'm an idiot."

Derek snorted his agreement but that wasn't unexpected.

"But I still mean it." He shoved at Derek’s shoulder again. Derek snapped a glare up at him again, this one not quite so angry. They were both just frustrated. Everything sucked.

"I will kick your ass, in this room right now, if it will make you sleep and stop talking," he offered.

"No, I'm good," said Stiles quickly. "Thanks though."

He went quiet again for a minute but didn't settle down, kept himself propped up on an elbow, facing Derek. The tension had faded a little, concerns of eminent doom replaced by other, more random things. Stiles was a pro at all things awkward and he could catch the vibe that he was entering into that territory. But there were some things he still wanted to at least get off his chest before he died and there would never be a not-awkward time for that.

"Yes?" Derek asked. He slowly dragged the word out just for the sake of confirming that Stiles was staring, which Stiles could definitely appreciate. He opened his mouth a few times, trying to get the words in his head to line up in a decent order before he said them.

"You know, uh, speaking of ass..." Stiles blinked; woah, that was definitely not what he wanted to open with. Derek glanced over at him.

"Think very carefully about the next words you say," he advised.

Stiles nodded and then just as quickly shook his head, frowned. "No, I think that's the problem actually. I'm thinking instead of just going with it, you know? Messes everything up..." Stiles was flustered. "Shut up, okay? I usually self-medicate to get around this."

Derek gave an amused sounding huff but he at least looked over at him. Stiles wasn't sure that helped.

"The pack-thing. I remember when you were trying to teach Isaac about it, you'd tell him stuff like I wasn't there so I kinda got the basics down," said Stiles. "And the stuff the other day."

Derek scrubbed at his face to mask a disappointed sigh. "I knew you were there."

"Yeah but _I_ didn't know that," said Stiles. "And that's kinda... Does pack cover..."

He trailed off. Derek watched him flail a moment and then shook his head. "Do you really want to have this conversation? Now? Here?"

"Yes," said Stiles, stubborn. "I'm trying to figure shit out, okay? I don't want to die a virgin _and_ terminally confused. I just want to know if pack is why I just... _Okay_. Wow." He blinked and tried to figure out how to verbally rein-in the mental observations that kept sneaking out.

Selectively ignoring things Stiles hadn't meant to say in the first place, Derek shook his head. "Pack is like family, that's the only way I can explain it that you might understand."

"Which I get, I get _family_. It's just I never ever thought about getting it on with Scott except that one time I made that crack about us making out and that was just desperation I think and I can tell the difference between _that_ and family, and it's not..." rambled Stiles. He realized what he said and went slightly bug eyed. "Oh. Shit."

Derek stared at him for an unfairly long time and Stiles' self-awareness only got worse. "So I just answered my own question again," said Stiles, trying to overcompensate for the awkward with yet more awkward. "Okay let's be fair here, we both knew there was no way I could have come out of this conversation without looking like an idiot and I didn't mean to say come-out. I mean- look, can you just kill me now? That way I can sleep in painful peace."

The Derek-face-mask finally wavered, the grin sneaking free at the corners. "What did Scott say?" Derek asked finally.

Stiles blinked at him. "Huh?"

"You either made out with Scott or joked about it with him," said Derek. "Which?"

"Joke. He didn't even laugh," said Stiles. "Bro left me hanging."

"That sounds about right," replied Derek. Stiles hesitated, not sure how to read Derek's quiet acceptance.

"How weird did I just make things?"

"No more than usual," Derek said. Stiles couldn't tell if he was relieved or offended. He still felt like a jackrabbit in a box, stuck between Derek and the wall. It got ten times worse when Derek propped up on his elbow, mirroring his position to look him in the eye.  "You _broadcast_ ," he said, "Loudly."

Stiles stared back at him. "Can we _please_ go back to the you kicking my ass thing now? Because that's less _everything_ than me _broadcasting_ something. I am begging-"

"No," said Derek. It was a challenge. Stiles blinked at him. "Deal with it."

For a long moment, Stiles could only stare. Then he finally took a breath. Deal with it, the man said. "So we're doing the thing where I talk myself into a hole and you do the thing with your eyebrows until I figure out the right answer to get back out of it?"

There was a tug of what Stiles had always assumed to be amusement on Derek's face then, where he tried not to smile and it softened everything else about him instead. Stiles had a good guess about what the right answer was, he was just too chickenshit to trust it.

Momentarily forgetting the whole breathing thing, Stiles focus-blurred on Derek's lips in the dark. He knew very clearly what he wanted to do, but since when did Derek want to let him? Stiles was playing chicken with a werewolf again. But he realized Derek had a better track record of letting him win. So he closed the distance, kissed him and tried not to freak out when Derek responded like he knew damn well what he was doing. And despite what Derek had said about pack being family, it was definitely not a family-safe peck on the cheek; it wasn’t even European, because Stiles was temporarily exempting the French.

When his hand threatened to start wandering and the rest of him started to droop closer, Stiles caught himself and leaned consciously back.

“Was that the right answer?” he asked quickly. Because if it was, he was going to turn it into an essay instead of a short-answer option, but he figured he needed to give the man a chance to speak up first. Derek nodded, his tongue sneaking out to run across his lips and Stiles took a sharp breath.

“It wasn’t the smart one,” said Derek, his voice low and quiet. “But... right answer.”

“Good,” said Stiles. He gave up then and pressed into Derek, encouraged when the man caught him by the hip and pulled him in closer. Stiles pinned him down and Derek had his fingers tangled in his shaggy hair, which validated every excuse Stiles had ever made for not getting it cut short again. They came up for air every once in awhile, but neither of them let the other go far out of reach for easy exploration. It effectively shut Stiles’ brain down for the day and the sun wasn’t awake yet.

When they finally fell asleep, their fingers had threaded together just at Stiles’ hip, keeping him close against Derek’s side, one arm wrapped around Derek and his face tucked to the warmth of his neck. It was much more comfortable an arrangement than trying to burrow against a wall.

 

***


	10. Chapter 10

The discovery upon waking was that Stiles hadn't moved in his sleep for once. Derek woke first and had a hand at Stiles' back, palm to bare skin to pull some of the pain he'd heard messing with Stiles' breathing. Stiles blinked at him when Derek told him why he woke up to his shirt being pried at. He was still waking up, not quite operating with filters yet, and very grateful more of him was on his front on the bed than on Derek.

"Just FYI, that trick is amazing," he said. "Just... the whole thing."

It got him grinned at and Stiles considered it a success even if he felt inarticulate and useless. Then he flopped his head back onto his new favorite werewolf pillow to see how long Derek would let him sleep for. He fell asleep listening to a heartbeat for the second time that day.

When he woke up again, the room was brighter, the sunrise reflected across the room on the wall Stiles planned to demolish after breakfast. All the more reason to get rid of the bright white paint job. Then Derek startled, like he had been suddenly woken. A second later Stiles heard the key-card beep on the door. They both started moving to get up then. Stiles' feet tangled in his blanket so his effort to climb out of bed only landed him awkwardly on the floor for Derek to trip on. The pair was a sight by the time the door opened. Kenny stared in at them, eyebrow arched.

"Huh," was all he said. He pointed to Derek. "Out. Breakfast."

Stiles started to stand up, not about to be left out of the first meal in twenty four hours, but he hadn't gotten totally free of the blanket. Derek used it to trip him back onto the bed.

"Just wait," he said. "Hit the shower or something. I'll be right back."

Mildly offended, Stiles stuck his nose in his shirt to see what he had missed but he still caught the hint from the werewolf nose. When the door was shut, Derek gone, Stiles headed for the bathroom.

He was stepping out of the shower when he heard the door open again, just minutes later. Food was more important than clothes so Stiles settled for the bath towel kilt and rushed out to greet breakfast. Only one slight hitch in the plan: Derek and breakfast were not there to be greeted.

"Cute," said his new guest. She was older but a little shorter than Stiles, dark hair, dark clothes and bright eyes. Also vaguely familiar. _That_ unsettled Stiles more than her unexpected presence in the room. She uncrossed her arms and twirled her finger to send Stiles back to the bathroom. "But you're not leaving the room like that. Get dressed."

"Uh...yeah..." was all Stiles managed before he retreated. She was still there when he got back.

"What's going on?" Stiles asked, wary of new wolves after Derek and Kenny's warnings. This lady was a wolf. She had to be. She had a no-bullshit expression and the proof of too many fights, what looked claw marks down her neck. The only way she could survive being shredded like that was to turn wolf.

"There's been a change in plans after Hale's adventure yesterday," she told him. She eyed the scratches they had made in the wall. "And some repairs need to be made. So. You're out for the day."

"No, I'm _starving_ ," corrected Stiles carefully. "They just went to get my food."

"No," the woman replied. Her patience was being tested but it held. "Derek went to Deucalion's office. He'll have breakfast there. That's where he'll be today."

"Oh god," muttered Stiles.

"So do you want food or do you want locked in the bathroom all day?" The lady wolf crossed her arms as she waited for an answer she already expected.

"Food," said Stiles. "I'll just hang out in the kitchen..."

"Nope," the woman said. She turned and swiped her keycard for the door. She held it open for him when she looked back. "You're with me today. Call me Braeden."

Stiles stopped as the woman's face and name clicked. He had seen her picture on a file of his dad's, security camera footage from the hospital, but he had heard her name from Isaac. "You?"

She arched an eyebrow.

"You helped-"

"That was me," she said, her expression dark. She waved toward the hall. "Now out."

Stiles had more questions than answers but he was hungrier more than he cared about any of them. He headed for the kitchen rather than wait to be told again.

 

***

 

Breakfast wasn't going to last long enough. Stiles had stolen as much food as he could but it became obvious he should have gone for the buffet doggie-bag option. Less than an hour after leaving the kitchen Stiles waited in a dojo, not far from the house and so much closer to the city. There were cars everywhere. Even pay phones or police boxes or something, Braeden wouldn't let him investigate. Instead, Stiles stood watching other kids run through moves and shout incomprehensible things at the werewolf teaching them.

He looked to Braeden. "Are you kidding me with this?"

Her features twitched and her shoulders lifted in a shrug. "I feel fairly confident in my assumption that any one of these kids could have you on the mats in under a minute."

Stiles sputtered. "Well, _yeah_. Should I tell you about my week so far? And you want to end it on Saturday class with _ten year olds_ kicking my ass?"

There was no real consideration needed. Braeden just nodded. "That's why you get the Saturday ten year olds. They'll go easy on you." She clapped a hand to his arm over the burn and Stiles glared at her, tried not to hiss like a deflating balloon. Braeden sighed. "Just don't do _that_ to a ten year old. You might traumatize her, or worse inflate her sense of her capabilities."

Stiles squinted at her. "I don't get it. You helped Isaac. Just... Turn the other way. I'll walk out the door. Give me an hour to find a freakin' Mountie or something and nobody ends up in the hospital. Or the morgue. I'm really trying to avoid the morgue."

Braeden crossed her arms and leveled a hard stare at Stiles that was completely impervious to the fact that she had to look up to do it.

"Helping Isaac, trying to help McCall? It came with consequences. I'm not repeating that mistake," she said. She nodded toward the doors. "You want me to look the other way? Learn how to fight for yourself. I'll look the other way when _you_ can send _me_ to the mats."

She meant it. Stiles went wide eyed. Shit.

"The day you win, I'll even tell you where to tell the Mounties to look for Derek. And how to scramble the thing in your arm," Braeden said.

Stiles stared out at the kids. "Okay. I can do this."

Braeden nodded. "That's why you're starting small."

That was rude and Stiles rolled his shoulders to pretend he hadn't heard. His attention returned to the kids and the movements they were mimicking. So physical coordination wasn't his thing. Accomplishing the stuff nobody expected he could do, though? That was what Stiles was good at.

 

***

 

Nope. He wasn't good at karate. _Oww_...

 

***

 

The only good thing to come from the day at the dojo - class after class of moving, waving his hands like he was in an 80’s movie sans the headbands, cleaning the mats because werewolves were bitchy - was that Stiles got fast food, delivered to the dojo for him, twice. Grease and curly fries and cheese and fat-cooked vegetables and Stiles _just didn’t care_ for about five minutes. They didn’t pick any other junk food up on the way back to the house though, which Stiles found annoying.

“Pizza would be good,” he hinted. Braeden arched an eyebrow at him and pointed him to the car.

“There’s food at the house,” she said. “Deucalion pays for that.”

“And the whole karate thing, too, right?” said Stiles. He glanced over at the driver as he buckled his seat-belt. “Or we can, ya know, send the bill to my dad. He’ll send a check back. I’m not sure what the currency rate is but I think he’d cover it.”

“Ha, ha, funny,” said Braeden with a non-smile. “And start an international incident, right? Scott’s dad is a fed. There would be too much red tape to cut through. Hate to dash your dreams.”

“Doubt that,” said Stiles. He went quiet and stared out the window, looking for something familiar, some clue about where he really was. There were phones at the house. They weren’t impossible to get to. If he had a city name, he could... he could what, exactly?

His dad couldn’t take on a dozen alphas. Scott couldn’t. If they tried to get Allison and her dad’s help, they could have all the hunters on the west coast there in a few days but that was just a shitty idea. For one thing, hunters were generally assholes, with the exception of Allison, and her dad too (sometimes) but only by association. For another it would just make Deucalion the Good Guy and there was no way Stiles would ever get behind that idea. And there was the big fat obvious detail that hunters wouldn’t let Derek leave. No wonder Stiles was getting banished to the city instead of locked in a room he could slowly demolish. He could do less damage in the city.

They drove past the trees that marked the town boundary and Stiles sagged in the seat. He leaned on the window and chewed at his fingers, anxious again. Then his brain did a full-stop and he stared over at Braeden.

“How’d you know about Scott’s dad?” he asked. She shrugged.

“We research before assignments. We knew a lot about Scott before we went down there, but some we got from Isaac,” she said. “It was why I... Scott’s just a kid. It wasn’t right.”

“Noble, considering that was like a month ago and yet here _I_ am,” muttered Stiles. Braeden glanced over at him.

“You had your chance to leave, Kenny said you stayed,” she replied, “I learned my lessons the hard way. You can too.”

“You just saw me lose _fake_ fights to a bunch of kids,” Stiles said, pointing back toward the general direction of the dojo. “Scott can at least, I dunno, bite things and fight back better than I can. That is messed up, man...”

“That’s what Hale is for. Just don’t make his job impossible and you’ll be okay.” Braeden kept her attention carefully on the road, not overly worried about Stiles’ irritation with her. “And keep learning from the kids and you’ll eventually be able to help yourself out.”

Stiles squinted at her. “Whose side are you actually on, anyway?”

Braeden shrugged and shook her head. “No sides. I just go where there’s money. The bite came with a specialized skillset and a few problematic quirks that make it hard to hold a desk job.”

“Mercenary,” said Stiles. She nodded.

“It works out pretty well for us. Best money I’ve ever made and I stay off the hunter radar. It’s easier this way,” she said. Her words sunk in and Stiles jumped.

“That’s it?” he asked. “That’s the perfect pack he’s going for? Some kind of merger between the wolf pack traditions and the more modern corporate stuff... strength in numbers because money brings it in. No loyalty fights, nobody trying to take his damn job... But make enough money and the hunters can’t touch you either if you play politics right...”

“Going for?” said Braeden with a huff, “He’s built it already. It’s just a bitch that he’s a little... unstable. Money is bad enough, but actual power and money? Don’t mess with that.”

“So it is a real pack?” Stiles stared at her, his mind going too fast. Braeden nodded, not overly concerned.

“Yeah. There’s just a paycheck attached,” she said.

“Incentive not to leave,” said Stiles. Braeden glanced over at him, probably at the change in his tone, but she shrugged.

“Yeah, I guess. It definitely helps when your boss nearly kills you anyway,” she said.

“Perfect,” muttered Stiles. Every part of him ached already and now a stress-headache added to the mix as his thoughts sped from one point to another and painted a picture he didn’t like. He didn’t like it and he couldn’t do anything about it. He slumped into the chair and went back to staring out the window. “Now I really wanna go home.”

 

***

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this fic is now done... i have to see if i still have a beta or if RL ate her but... expect updates over the next few days as RL allows again! \o/
> 
> \-----

Braeden stayed with him in the kitchen, a helpful guard dog against the funny faces of the other alphas. Stiles sat over his plate, fidgeting more than eating.

"Where's Derek?" he asked. Braeden shrugged. She didn't know and wasn't about to go look. He started to ask if she would anyway but stopped when he caught the slight twitch of her fork toward the few other people in the room. There weren't many, but strangers were strangers and strange alphas were dangerous to an unturned Hale beta.

Instead of hunt down Derek, Stiles went for seconds and came back with a mostly full milk carton. When he asked to go upstairs, Braeden obliged. One of the alphas took offense to Stiles stealing the milk and his babysitter just told them to go buy some for themselves if they were that worried about it.

With food to graze on, Stiles felt a little better about his imprisonment by himself on the third floor. He kept the milk in the bathroom cupboard, buried in towels to keep cooler, and pieced off the plate as he needed to.

Mostly he paced. And then rearranged the furniture. They had replaced and repainted the compromised section of the wall so the only form of protest he had was the furniture. He moved the desk to the wall that had just been painted and shoved the bed under the window. It was a pitiful protest but it was all he had.

The door finally opened. The Derek who walked in was pissed. The room being moved around distracted him from glaring as Chuck shut the door on them. The dark man gave Stiles a warning look as he left but he didn't know if that was because of Derek's mood or just to stay away from the door. Worried or not, Stiles knew better than to mess with that particular scowl on Derek's face.

"You okay?" Stiles asked. He stood by the bookshelf and waited to be noticed instead. Then Derek started to sneeze, surprising the both of them. He looked to Stiles, confused.

"They fixed the wall we were going to renovate," said Stiles, sheepishly pointing to the wet paint behind the desk he had moved. Derek recovered, motioned between the two pieces of wandering furniture.

"Is this going to be a regular thing?" he asked. Stiles offered a slight grin.

"Depends on how bored I get. Tonight I was just pissed," he said. Derek flashed worry and Stiles shook his head. "Braeden said you'd be here when we got back, but you were still stuck with Deucalion."

Still tense and seething, Derek nodded, looked around the room like he was trying to adjust. It didn't look like he really wanted anyone in his space but Stiles was on edge and would only make it worse if he waited for a more obvious welcome from Derek. He moved within arm's reach and tugged Derek's shoulder. "Come on, man. Are you okay or what?"

The response was quick, Derek catching Stiles' arm to pull him in and lean on him. Stiles wrapped him in a ready hug and tried to adjust when Derek buried his face against his neck.

"Yeah, I know. I reek," said Stiles.

"No," said Derek. "Room reeks."

The suggestion that Stiles was some kind of room freshener after having spent all day sweaty and rolling on dirty mats and cleaning the dirty mats with more dirty water actually made Stiles laugh. Derek cinched his arms tighter around and slowly seemed to settle down.

"Where were you?" Stiles asked after the quiet started to drag on him; he wasn't allowed to fall asleep standing up.

"Downstairs," Derek said. His mouth was still right up against Stiles' throat and talking did dangerous things when Stiles still had to bug Derek about important-potentially-life-ruining things. He shied to the side and pulled back to get Derek to look at him.

"Like all day? Not outside at all?" Derek nodded so Stiles pushed his shoulder. "I saved you food. Take it outside and let the room air out from the paint. Sorry, man. It was cold so I wasn't thinking about that when I got in here."

Derek surprised him with a kiss and derailed Stiles' plans momentarily. He smiled back to encourage it. Seconds later though he pulled back, shocked and angry and worried all at once. He caught Derek at the back of the neck to keep him from moving away and looked him right in the eyes.

"So the unexpected _perks_ of our slight relationship upgrade turns out to be knowing when you're freaking _hurt_ ," said Stiles, tone conflicted. "What happened?"

"I handled it," said Derek, growly.

"Then why'd I taste blood? You go all Sparta on me and kill an enemy?" returned Stiles. He needed to learn more languages so he could swear more in his head; the list he had was too short. Derek stared back at him, stubborn. Silent. With a frustrated grunt of his own, Stiles let him go to point out the window. "Out. We go out."

The order somehow seemed to surprise Derek and he blinked at him. Stiles kissed him again and then smacked him upside the back of the head to get his attention. "Goooo..."

Derek let go then and headed for the window while Stiles went for the dinner he had saved. Seconds were going to be a regular thing if Deucalion was going to be beating and starving Stiles' new favorite wolf.

There was a holdup at the window and Derek just sat on the sill waiting for him.

"What?" asked Stiles. Derek held his hand up to the open window to show that it bounced off just like it would have off glass.

"Ash," he said. "They lined the window frame outside."

Derek took the plate from Stiles as he started running out of curse words again.

 

***

 

They were at the lying stage again. Derek wouldn't tell Stiles what had happened that day, wouldn't explain the blood on the back of his shirt or the rip in the collar of it. It was less retaliatory and more protectiveness that made Stiles keep quiet about what he had learned out on his own. It was just more stuff they couldn't do anything about and Derek didn't need it. And it sucked.

In the meantime, they were apparently AI corp's new business expense. The drawers under the bookshelves had been stocked with an alarming stash of free clothes. Everything fit Derek and was a little baggy on Stiles but no matter how anybody looked at it, it promised an extended stay was planned. A hamper had taken up residence in the bathroom too; they were high class now.

With the excess clothes to burn through, Stiles shoved Derek in the shower after he finished his cold dinner. It was the only way he could check up on Derek and get away with it. There were no bruises or cuts to explain what Stiles had noticed already. So, since Derek didn't want to talk about it, and he had no leverage to pry it out of him, Stiles sat on the counter outside the shower enclosure and rambled to Derek about the joys of being shown up in a fight by a few dozen midgets in white uniforms.

When Stiles went to claim the shower once Derek was out, Derek caught him by the wrist and kept him away from it. "Wait until morning," he said, and Stiles shrugged; he wasn't the one with the werewolf nose. He let Derek fuss about the burn on his arm and they discovered there was a first aid kit in the bathroom cupboards to take care of it. It would heal but it wouldn't be pretty and Stiles decided he wasn't going to let Derek help him with it anymore; maybe Derek was a masochist but Stiles wasn't actually a sadist.

They killed the lights and sat on the bed, staring out the open window and passing the milk carton back and forth like it was a bottle of Jack Daniels or something. Derek stayed quiet so Stiles rambled about a movie he saw once that starred a window. Movies about windows could only get so far though. Heavier things kept distracting him and the chatter was forced.

"I don't get it," said Stiles, figuring to just dive right in to the thing that was pissing him off. The worst that would happen would be Derek ignored him. "This place is full of alphas. Just what the hell happened that you're healed already?"

Derek forced a sarcastic, bitter half-smile. "Kenny was a hunter before he was brought in. Deucalion finds that entertaining."  
Stiles didn't. He glared out the window as though maybe the moon was personally responsible for Deucalion's sense of irony. "Do you think maybe Kenny and Chuck were the hunters Allison's dad warned Scott about?"

Derek was quiet a moment, took the milk carton and nearly finished it off. Eventually he nodded. "Probably."

It only made Stiles worry more about what he was missing in Beacon Hills. He sort of gave up on the day then, climbed off the bed enough to start pulling blankets back. They had to leave the window open to air the room out and it was cold compared to home. He curled up on his side and draped an arm over Derek's leg where he still sat to stare out the window.

When the milk was gone Derek tossed it out the open window just to piss off whoever found it in the morning. Then he crawled under the blankets and Stiles pulled him into a hug. Derek huddled in against him, face to his throat again to hide from the paint smell still in the room, and his arm tucked around under Stiles’ shirt to randomly pull away some of the soreness from the number of times he had hit the mats shoulders first. Stiles didn't even have to tell him about it, Derek just found it to take care of it.

 

***

 

Stiles hadn’t so much gone to sleep that night as he passed out some time after Derek slept. His determination to take watch only got him so far past exhaustion though. He woke up first when the sun hit his face, Derek still curled in just as they’d gone to sleep. The open window left the room somewhere around a hundred degrees below zero but werewolves and blankets made it tolerable. He didn’t move at all when the door beeped and opened. Derek poked his head up over the edge of the blanket though so Stiles at least pretended to acknowledge it.

“We need to get you idiots an alarm clock,” said Kenny. He dropped a big ten gallon garbage can loudly against the wall not far from the door.

“You could just learn to knock,” returned Stiles.

“Bad idea,” the hunter replied. “Tactical reasons.”

“No shit.” Stiles made fists into Derek’s shirt to keep him where he was, which for just a second seemed to amuse him at least.

“Let’s go, gentlemen. Breakfast only happens if someone is out this door in the next five seconds,” said Kenny. Derek bought it - even though Stiles could have told him that the five seconds rule was crap - and started to get up. Stiles yanked on the shirt but Derek just hovered over him for a moment, his intent to leave still very obviously there.

“I’ll see you in awhile,” he said. He had as much faith in that promise as Stiles did and he had to stifle the argument with a kiss. Morning-breath was better than the surprise of the night before, and after a week of shared spaces Stiles was almost used to that anyway, so he accepted it with a blush. Then Derek was gone and the rest of the day went almost exactly the same as the previous one.

 

***


	12. Chapter 12

The next three days passed that way. By the third one, Stiles' aches and pains had disappeared into a generic tolerance for what he was trying to learn from his trips into town. Martial arts training wasn't exactly lacrosse. There weren't rules of play to memorize and keep track of. The trick was to internalize the movement, to make it instinct, and instinct didn't happen fast enough. He couldn't just keep up with the werewolves teaching him. He had to beat them. Pass or fail wasn't good enough. And it wore him out but Stiles could handle it.

What he couldn't handle was getting back to see Derek run down and hungry, bloodied and healed and angry. It added a distracting urgency to the efforts at learning; as soon as he could send Braeden to the mat, they were set to go. The woman had helped Isaac, had tried to help Scott, so Stiles believed her when she said she would help him too. He just had to meet his end of the deal and not push his self-imposed deadline too far.

That’s not to say that Derek wasn’t handling it; he was Derek and he had the whole wolf thing working in his favor for the most part. He healed. But he was tired and wearing down, and that was the whole point of whatever he went through while he was stuck “downstairs” to contrast Stiles’ “in town.” A few days in and Stiles was on a short-fuse while Derek’s just seemed to be getting longer, his tolerance of the other alphas stretched a little higher. He could be pushed around now because he really didn’t seem to care. He was a wolfy Bruce Banner, always angry and getting better at turning it off and on. It was eerie to Stiles, to know Derek was still in there, but to see him muted. And he did it to himself so he could stay with Stiles at the end of the day, switching between fighting the alphas without him and being a calmer version of himself with Stiles where he was temporarily safe. It all sat on Stiles' mind, distracted him during the day.

"Come on," Braeden said, pulling Stiles out of a half-present run through the tai chi they had taught him to keep him from burning out on the more contact-oriented studies. He kept screwing it up and starting over. Stiles straightened up and looked at her, frowning.

"What?" he asked. "The place is closed, you said-"

"Yeah, but d'you want to piss off Derek?" she asked, glancing at the small watch on her wrist. Stiles hadn't had a watch in ages and his phone was back home in Beacon Hills, so he looked out the front windows and saw how dark it was. He was usually back at the house by now. Derek would get worried and pissed at this. And he probably hadn't been fed yet.

"Crap, dinner..."

They hurried out of the dojo and were probably speeding a little. For someone who wasn't on their side, Braeden helped out a lot when it wouldn't get her in trouble.

"Listen, Stilinski," she said as they drove back to the house. "I know you've got an agenda working as hard as you have been. But do you want to take tomorrow off anyway?"

"No?" Stiles said. He wanted to go home and was just fine pushing himself until he succeeded or collapsed, either way.

"You've been at it five days straight," Braeden argued. "For almost ten hours a day when you're stubborn. Coffee's great to keep you going but you're going to get hurt."

Stiles stared at her. "Five days? Tomorrow's thanksgiving?"

Braeden had to think about it a moment before she nodded. "Yeah, actually," she said. "So you'll give it a rest, right?"

They had been gone just over a full week. Eight days. They blurred together for Stiles but he was suddenly sure his dad had everything counted up in hours. And his dad was going to be alone on Thanksgiving. Stiles nodded mutely. He needed a day off.

"I need to call my dad," he said. Braeden let out a laugh.

"Good luck with that project, kid."

 

***

 

Back at the house they barely caught the last of dinner hour. They definitely caught Derek, or rather, he caught Stiles, just walking up the driveway. He didn't even wait until they were in the house, just let himself out through the front door.

"Oh, shit," muttered Braeden. She backed off from Stiles enough to keep Derek from challenging her and making it worse. It was bad enough he had three alphas following him out. Stiles jogged carefully over the snow to beat the alphas to him. He had no problem letting Derek wrap him in a reassuring hug but he pulled back to figure out why he had picked a fight to do it.

"Derek, what are you-" Stiles stopped as he saw Derek's face in the light from the house. A red welt went right down in a stripe from his forehead to his chin off the side of his nose. It wasn't bad, would heal and disappear probably, but it split his lip. And it hadn't healed yet. "What the hell-"

"I wanted out of the damn house," Derek told him, quiet. "And you're late. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I was just practicing. Sorry..." Stiles trailed off as Derek's babysitters caught up to them. "Hey! Back off," he told them, like he could warn off three alphas. Derek smirked at him for it.

"Get in the house," came the predicted order. Derek started to comply but Stiles planted his heels, caught a fistful of Derek's shirt to keep him there.

"Where's Deucalion? I wanna make a bet with him," said Stiles. He was dead serious. Derek's eyes bugged.

"Stiles-" His protest was cut short when Stiles clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Trust me, he'll think it's great," Stiles promised.

"What is he talking about?" one of the alphas asked Braeden. She shook her head.

"He didn't ask me about it," said Braeden. She scrounged up a glare for Stiles. "I would have told him to keep quiet 'cause nobody wanted to hear it."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Just do it. Call him and ask. We'll wait."

Derek backed him on it, catching hold of his hoodie as he stood beside Stiles. It was cold enough to see their breath and Stiles didn't have a coat so he gladly leaned into the wolf's warmer space. The alphas discussed it before seeing that, whatever the trick, their charges were behaving alright outside. So one of them called the boss to loop him in. Stiles grinned despite himself. He had put exactly no thought into this plan, but even if it failed, Derek was outside for the first time in a week. They both remembered a truck ride in a cramped dark box too well to not see daylight and breathe fresh air on a regular basis, even a week later.

Deucalion took his sweet time getting outside. By then, Stiles had huddled into his hoodie - he was so glad he hadn’t let them trash that - and turned toward Derek for the warmth of his jeans’ front pockets. He smirked nose to nose with Derek as the alphas all rolled their eyes and found other places to look.

There was noise from the house and soon more alphas spilled out. Stiles snuck free of Derek to face the alpha who had called Deucalion. “What’d you do, sell tickets?”

“I understand you have a wager for me, Stiles,” came Deucalion’s voice. Beside Stiles, Derek went still, his lightened mood back to his usual as of lately. Deucalion approached them in the snow in front of the house, under the spill of the big yard lights, dressed in gloves and a coat. The alpha noted he must be cold without a jacket and Stiles resisted the urge to call him a weakling for having the smarts to not freeze in the snow (unlike himself.)

“Tomorrow’s a holiday,” Stiles announced instead. “Thanksgiving. I want to call my dad.”

“Shit,” muttered Derek. Stiles elbowed him for it and made it look like he was just putting his hands in his jacket pockets. Deucalion didn’t look impressed by the idea either.

“That sounded more like a demand than a bet,” said Deucalion. “And I see very little interest in it.”

“I’ll fight Derek for it, out here, like right now,” said Stiles. That got a few laughs but Deucalion arched an eyebrow. Derek grabbed a handful of Stiles’ jacket in a very clear disapproval of the idea but he at least wasn’t going to leave him hanging on it. Stiles took a cold breath and kept on. “If I win, I call my dad. If I lose, Derek and me cook Thanksgiving dinner for a bunch of... Canadians.”

“I find it highly unlikely Derek would let you lose,” said Deucalion. Stiles shook his head.

“Last time I called my dad, Derek got pissed. He at least won’t let me _win_ ,” said Stiles. It was an exaggeration but not like Deucalion needed to _know_ that. He shrugged. “So pretty much the same thing either way.”

“As entertaining a charade as it could be, there’s no value to it,” said Deucalion. He nodded toward Derek. “And it would be charade. While I have no doubt you want to show off, after just a few days you’re not capable of winning any real fight against a werewolf. Not even a _former_ alpha. And I know for a fact that Derek is not capable of letting you lose. No bet, Stiles.”

“But I want to call my dad,” said Stiles. He shrugged, hands still in his pockets. “You wanted me to learn to fight, so I am. That’s the only thing I’ve got to trade.”

“Ah,” said Deucalion. An affable smile made the alpha look almost sincere in his amusement then. He stepped forward and set a gloved hand to Stiles’ shoulder. “And that’s where you’re wrong, son. I expect the allegiance of the Hale pack. There’s the two of you left. Not just Derek.” He slid his hand down to catch the still-healing burn on Stiles’ arm and remind him painfully that it was there. Stiles tried to shrug out of his grasp but it didn’t work, because _alpha werewolf_. Claws added to the pain quickly so Stiles tried to stop moving to placate as Deucalion turned his attention to Derek. “Had enough fresh air for the day, Derek?”

There was a brief staring match before Derek nodded, his jaw set. Deucalion shoved Stiles into him then. “Upstairs.”

Stiles marched before he was warned twice and Derek followed, still hanging on to the jacket to keep Stiles from stopping or turning around. Braeden trailed after the pair and Kenny joined them at the porch. He cuffed Stiles in the back of the head, muttering, “Idiot,” but Stiles just flipped him off and kept walking. He hadn’t planned on winning anything anyway, with no warning for the bullshit he spewed. But as it turned out, he learned something he hadn’t caught on to before. Sometimes Stiles had to have things spelled out for him after all.

 

***

 

The door closed them in and Stiles dropped back on the bed with a relieved sigh. They hadn't exactly been sent to their rooms without food, Chuck had passed along a carton of milk and a sandwich they could split. That wasn't much but if they slept it could get them to breakfast. Derek sat at the foot of the bed to eat, suspiciously quiet.

"So?" Stiles asked the ceiling. "Where's the lecture?"

"I know bullshit when you spread it out there, Stiles. There's no lecture because you were just trying to buy me some time outside," said Derek. "So still _stupid_ , but..."

Stiles shoved himself up, scooted to lean against Derek and set his chin on the man's shoulder. "You needed it."

"Yeah," Derek admitted. "But if you pull something like that again I will fucking _end_ you."

Stiles grinned at the hollow threat. "Now if you had tried that line with Deucalion we could totally be playing in the snow right now."  
Derek huffed. "You would have froze."

"Insignificant detail," said Stiles dismissively. He chewed at the inside of his cheek, thoughtful. He really did want to talk to his dad though. Prodding at Derek's side with a knuckle, Stiles edged off the bed. "Hurry and eat. I wanna talk."

They took turns. Stiles hit the shower and came back to his share of the food. By the time Derek was back, the sandwich was gone as was half the milk. It was set in easy reach, the lights were killed, and the pair crawled into bed. It was the only safe place to talk in a house full of werewolves with exceptional hearing, their voices hidden by pillows and blankets. And it was quiet, which Derek seemed to like better anyway.

And then Stiles was staring at Derek and couldn't figure out what to lead with: " _So I lied to you last week..._ " Or " _I think we should give up and sign on for the AI paychecks._ " It was a hard call because both would get him killed in short order after the week Derek had. So he stalled.

"What happened to your face?" Stiles asked, ever inelegant. "Why didn't-"

"The _usual_ reason I don't heal, Stiles," grumbled Derek. He tugged at his pillow to hide the stripe, like it was a distraction or something. Maybe it was but that was on Stiles, not Derek. Stiles shoved it back down.

"Look, maybe it's not worth this," he said finally. "He has a pack, sure, but they're not the same as what you had. They are here because he freaking _pays_ them. Because it's a job. Why can't we do that? Just take it as a job. How's he going to know any different?"

"I'm not an alpha," said Derek. "I'm not even half as strong as he is. I can't challenge him if he's pack. I can't _hurt_ him."

"So what if we hang on the loophole that he wants our _allegiance_ instead of pack?" Stiles asked. "Then it just depends on your definition of the words, right? Semantics. Alpha pack, Alpha Inc... same thing but different. I define allegiance as _kissing ass until we can go home_."

Derek reached up and rested his hand at Stiles' cheek. "Stiles. I get it. It's Thanksgiving and you're worried about your dad. But we've been around this before..."

Stiles shook his head against the pillow just enough to be felt. "No, Derek. That's not... A few days ago, Braeden told me she came back because she needs the job. Deucalion all but killed her and she still had a spot on the team..."

"So?" Derek frowned at him, not following.

"So if he didn't kick _her_ out for helping us, he didn't kick the other two out. The evil-hulk twins are still on the payroll," he said. "They're down there _still_ trying to get at Scott. They probably told Kenny and Chuck where to find you in the first place. Except for Deaton, you were the only one down there who can teach Scott anything about the alpha thing, and now you're _here_..."

Derek stared at him, actually thinking instead of dismissing him this time.

"I wasn't going to tell you what she said because there's nothing we can do about it from here," said Stiles. "But earlier? Deucalion said I'm part of the deal. I'm not a wolf. Maybe we're pack, but I can't be an alpha, I don't think I even count as a beta. Not with some werewolf fanatic who names his company _Alpha Inc_. He _buys_ loyalty. If I sign up, maybe you don't have to. He'll blame me for anything, I dunno, _wrong_ on his little pack-radar. Maybe we can fake it just enough to get home."

The expression on Derek's face as he stared at Stiles then was completely new.

"What?" Stiles pressed.

"I'm- maybe I had it wrong before," Derek said quietly. "Maybe I had pack mixed up a little too."

Stiles squinted at him. "What's that mean? You can't exactly change your mind _now_..."

Derek shook his head and leaned in to catch Stiles in a very thorough kiss. Stiles still looked confused when they broke for air.

"You're more ah-" Derek said. He changed tracks mid-thought and nodded. "We'll go with it. Your idea. We can see if it will work."

Stiles started up a small celebration but Derek slid his hand to catch the back of his neck. "But if he calls the bluff... Don't play games. Just back down. We lose if he gives you the bite. Then he's got _two_ betas to kick around."

Stiles agreed with that loud and clear. It wasn't far from his mind. Every gang had an initiation, and Deucalion was after an ideal situation, the perfect pack. Derek wasn't an alpha anymore, Stiles wasn't a wolf, and of those two problems, Stiles was the easier fix. And more expendable.

"I have started factoring expendability into my life-skills. When we get home I am gonna need so much counseling as it is," he realized. Derek tugged him in close as a silent apology and argument. Stiles grinned against his cheek. "Or I guess maybe more of this'll do it."

 

***


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for random fights. (Think dogs randomly fighting amongst themselves, apply it to humans.) and I've also been told to warn for major feelz. Beta suggested tissues handy for some parts...
> 
> \----

The alarm clock thing still hadn't happened. The best they had was the _beep!_ before the door opened.

"Rise and shine, gents," came Kenny's voice from the doorway. He had at least stopped walking in without better warning. It was still damn awkward. Stiles scowled and started untangling from Derek to let him up. He stayed flopped on his pillow and stared at the wall rather than glare at the door.

"Kid! Wake up," insisted Kenny. Stiles looked over his shoulder to see the man waiting just inside the room beside Derek, still holding the door. "This was your idea. Get your ass up and dressed and let's go."

Stiles blinked at him, confused. But he wasn't going to argue and scrambled to follow orders. He glanced outside as he struggled into a new shirt. It was either going to snow or they were being fetched earlier than usual; the sky was still dark.

"What's happening now?" Derek asked, cautious. They headed for the stairs.

"You were volunteered for kitchen duty, so... KP is happening," said Kenny.

"Wha- wait... I said if I lost the bet we'd do dinner," said Stiles. "There was no bet, so...There was no volunteering for KP."

"You're the one who tried to play games with the boss," Kenny reminded him. "He hands out the assignments. You've got food to make. Three squares. Fifteen people."

"Where do you keep the rat poison," muttered Stiles. Kenny shrugged, a smirk on his face as he swiped open the first floor stairwell keylock. He held open the door for them.

"First floor bathroom, with the cleaning supplies," he said helpfully. "Have fun."

Stiles looked at him warily. He figured it was another lie. Even if Stiles did know where the bathroom was, the hunter wouldn't just pass out helpful information like that for free. Derek, though, didn't look so sure.

 

***

 

Stiles was used to working the kitchen at home. He had taken it over from his dad even before his mom had died, too absolutely positive that his dad's cooking would give them all cancer. Mostly he only had to cook for himself, his dad's hours leaving him catching fast food more often than anything from home. So the prospect of fifteen meals was daunting, but the mess this time was his fault so he could make sure it got done.

The usual chef was there, to supervise, at least temporarily. He was shorter than Stiles and trim in the way that said he never actually ate his own food. He showed Stiles where to find things - he was disturbingly adept at treating Derek like he didn't exist - and laid out basic instructions for the meals. He had breakfast and lunch already planned but he left dinner off the list. When Stiles dared ask about it, he was snapped at.

"Because someone wanted turkey," the man said. He grabbed a pan from the rack and smacked it onto Stiles' hand. It smarted fierce and Stiles dropped it, Derek catching it. The usual cook glared at them both. He poked Stiles in the shoulder. "So if you want turkey and all the trimmings, you cook it." He turned to Derek. "And you know the rules. I'll be back in two hours with enough food for a goddamn army. In the meantime, you get on feeding it the usual."

"Got it," said Stiles, quick to promise just because he thought the man expected an answer. It turned out that he hadn't. Derek slid between them just in time to block a backhand to the face. It caught Derek at the back of the ear instead. Stiles stared, bug eyed and slack-jawed.The cook glared at him as Derek edged past as though he hadn't meant to interrupt the blow and he put the pan he had caught on the stove. He rubbed at his ear a little and kept his attention anywhere but on Stiles and the cook. There was the slightest smug twist of his lips for the interference but Stiles doubted the angry cook saw it.

"Don't put anything away anywhere you didn't find it, don't sneak my food, and don't talk back," said the cook. He was back to poking Stiles in the shoulder with his fingers. "That's the rules. And the sound echoes in here. So keep quiet."

Stiles just blinked at him, unsure if he should say anything this time or not. He caught Derek give a slight nod and so copied his example. That did the trick and the cook left the room with just one more glare at Derek. Stiles stared. When he was sure he was gone, he turned to Derek.

" _Are you shitting me?_ " He kept his voice a whisper but it took a _lot_ of work. Derek shook his head.

"Remember when you told me the twins sold Scott a sob story about being the bitches of the pack?" he said, just as quiet. "I don't think they were lying. Because they're not here now and that pretty much leaves us."

A cough from the doorway kept Stiles quiet and they glanced over to see Kenny bringing a dining room chair in and sitting just inside the kitchen. Stiles had no problem ignoring him and went back to the problem at hand.

“Have you been stuck in the kitchen all week?” he asked Derek. Derek glanced at him briefly before getting started on the breakfast-thing they were supposed to be working on. Stiles was still mentally stuck on the near-miss casual violence and didn’t care if there were going to be hungry werewolves knocking in a half an hour.

“No,” said Derek. “But it’s a pretty universal experience no matter what room you’re in.”

“Speaking from experience,” Kenny chimed in from the door. “That love tap just now was tame.”

Derek looked back at him, anger on a hair-trigger. “ _You_ shut up.”

It wasn’t surprising that Derek would mouth off to Kenny; Stiles did that all the time. The shocker was that Kenny mocked him for it and lived. Derek went back to working with the stove like he didn’t care. Stiles was now certain he had woken up that morning in an alternate reality.

“So that’s-”

“Yes,” cut in Derek. “They’re all assholes, that is why by the time you’re back I’m starved and look like shit.” He nodded absently toward Kenny and took some aggression out on a package of breakfast steaks he tossed onto the counter-top. “That one’s a prince compared to the rest but that’s just because he doesn’t have claws.”

Kenny gave a snort that sounded almost amused but he stayed out of it. Stiles started awkwardly looking for something to do that wouldn’t be taking the distraction of work away from Derek. He seemed to know what he was doing.

“Sorry,” he offered up, not sure what to say. “Is it going to be like that all day? Or just him?”

“It’s still a pack, Stiles,” said Derek, a little less sharp. “You’re either part of it or you’re not. Alphas especially have no need to tolerate somebody from another pack in their territory. An omega who cost them packmates is really, really...”

When Derek let the conclusion drop off, Stiles frowned and nodded. Just when he figured they had it down, they had a plan, he found out he hadn’t been catching everything he should have.

“So what, I don’t talk to anyone today? Just stay out of the way? I don’t need a concussion by the end of it,” he said. Derek shook his head.

“Let me handle it. And don’t argue with them.”

Stiles nearly lost his eyebrows to his hairline. “You don’t?”

“That’s not what I said, now is it?” Derek replied, annoyed.

“Kid, what he just told you is that you’ve got a pack of territorial assholes still smarting from a double pack-loss,” interrupted Kenny. “If one of them took a swipe at your neck instead of his, your grave would be dug a head shorter. And he’d still have to dig it. So if the man tells you not to argue, don’t.”

Derek cast a dark look back at Kenny but Stiles couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t argue. He fought back the urge to go find a corner to sit in, or ask to get locked in upstairs where he couldn’t make things worse, and reached out to put a hand on Derek’s arm instead to make him look at him.

“Just tell me how to help, okay?” he said. Derek nodded his promise. Not long later, they had it down to a silent science. Once the alphas started wandering in, Derek didn’t have to say much at all to keep the cooking going while he served the food, which meant he kept the bad attitudes away from Stiles’ neck for awhile.

 

***

 

The kitchen was a big room with a butcher-block island to serve the food from. Most of the alphas stayed on their side of it but some walked through by the stove just to cause trouble. Out of the thirteen people who showed up for breakfast, three of them on separate occasions found some excuse to smack Derek around on their way through the food line. Two didn't like that he was cooking in the first place, and the third just didn't like Derek's face. That observation made Stiles laugh out loud, he was so surprised by it, and that was the only fight that Derek fought back. The alpha didn't like being laughed at by somebody he could snap like a twig so Derek ran interference. That one got close to the stove and Stiles turned off the open flames before retreating. The others broke it up - in defense of their food, most likely - before the werewolves could shift form for a proper fight. Derek still came out of it with a bruised face, a cut on his brow and a burned hand; his hand healed, the cut was going to take time.

And that was just trying to get through breakfast.

Once the last AI alpha had wandered in for the morning - Stiles counted off twelve, thirteen including Kenny, but Derek said that was all, - then they could eat. They decided not to chance the dining room though. Kenny made it a point to put a plate in his hand but Derek wouldn't eat anything while the AI crew was in the room. It was probably the best choice; Braeden joined Kenny as supervisor after that and she knew more than they did about why.

Stiles stuck close to Derek even though he was sure Braeden was safe (and Kenny could just fuck off.) They stayed near the door, talking quietly and leaving Stiles and Derek alone to the table by the kitchen’s one window. It was more like a bench under the window and a small table to go with it, out of the way, but enough to take a break at. Stiles edged in next to Derek, their backs to the window to watch the kitchen. He kind of needed to be within arm’s reach or he felt like he might do or say something disastrous. He was mad and frustrated and just as likely to go off on somebody as he was to hide from them. The last thing he felt like doing was eating but it was an excuse to stay out of the alpha pack’s line of fire.

“Knock it off,” Derek said, voice quiet and attention on his own unappealing plate of hard-earned breakfast. Stiles glanced over at him, now confused on top of everything else.

“What?”

“Whatever you’re scowling at. Go back to what you knew yesterday and forget this.” Derek said it like it was supposed to be easy or something.

“That’s one of those things that could get me dead,” said Stiles. “This sucks but at least I know about it now.”

“Then calm down,” said Derek. Stiles shot him a glare and he looked back with bushy eyebrow arched. “Have you ever picked up a bird or a mouse or something and all you can feel is the little heart about to explode and, you know, hear the little squeaks for breath? That’s you right now. Nothing’s changed since yesterday, it’s all the same group of psychos.”

The comparison didn’t exactly make Stiles any calmer, given they were next door to a room full of werewolves who probably did see him as small prey. He stared at the door and tried to find Braeden and Kenny’s standing guard there as a shield instead of a threat. Telling him to calm down was easily the most unhelpful thing Derek had ever done. Stiles turned on the bench then, knee dragged up along Derek’s leg as he edged close enough to lower his voice. It helped that Derek caught the hint and looked over at him.

“So, lemme just... frame this so maybe you’ll understand,” said Stiles, his tone careful. “You, werewolf. Me, not. Important distinction, right?” He paused to wait for Derek’s skeptic nod of agreement. “Right. So... say, you, fully capable werewolf, found yourself dropped in a shark tank. Sharks are just big, dumb, predictable animals. You can see ‘em, you’re not bleeding yet, so just keep treading water and hoping, right?”

Derek seemed mildly amused and nodded. “Assuming I’m not paralyzed from the neck down, I can punch a shark.”

“Yes, see, that! Exactly that.” Stiles let that sink in. Then he said, “Now add piranha to the shark tank. Fast, vicious biting monsters, all but impossible to see until they snap. Still cool with the shark-punching plan?”

Derek frowned at him, amusement gone. “It’s not-”

“Wait a minute,” said Stiles. He held up a hand. “I’m not done. So now pretend you are paralyzed from the neck down, and it’s you and me in there, and _you’re_ the deadweight who can’t even punch the sharks.”

“You’re not deadweight,” argued Derek quickly.

“You’re avoiding the hypothetical,” returned Stiles. Derek narrowed his eyes at him.

“Fine. Hypothetically, or historically, the deadweight argues that they’re dead weight, the idiot keeps swimming, and they get out of the water. That’s how this works.”

“Just keep swimming?” Stiles shook his head. “Thanks, _Dory_.”

“Think twice about that one, ‘cause that makes you _Squishy_ and, trust me, this is the wrong crowd,” replied Derek. Stiles’ jaw dropped at the once-again surprise humor where he had expected anger. Derek reached up and caught him at the nape of the neck, tugged him into his space, forehead to forehead. “You’re not deadweight. We’re not drowning. There’s no piranha.”

“I’m not sure how to call it _helping_ , Derek.”

"You turned off the burner before Fisher tried to slam my face into it," Derek argued. Stiles wasn't accepting that.

"He would have left your apparently ugly face alone if I hadn't been here, _not-helping_."

“Just trust me, you are,” said Derek. Frustrated, Stiles lifted his hands to mirror Derek’s hold on him, lacing his fingers behind the man’s neck and giving a careful tug.

“I don’t trust you ‘cause you’re lying to shut me up and ignoring the part where that’s not gonna solve our problem, man.”

"Look, maybe we can't help ourselves out of it yet, but I'm telling you, Stiles, you are helping me, alright? I'm not gonna pretend I'd have tried this hard _without_ you here." Derek stared right at him, not flinching and not letting Stiles look away either. "That's actually the only thing we can do for anyone back home right now. Just not give up. No freaking out."

“I’m gonna freak out,” said Stiles, quietly insistent. “You’re getting your ass kicked _every_ day-”

Derek shook his head. “I heal.”

“Yeah, but before that? You get _hurt_.”

Derek’s concerned expression softened, a little less worried. “And _you_ notice. So I _try_ not to get hurt.”

Trying to avoid fights wasn't Derek's strong suit. The light-bulb clicked on in his head finally and Stiles figured he got it. “That works?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Derek. Stiles nodded acceptance then, knocking his forehead against Derek’s.

“Then try harder.” It got him kissed so Stiles took that as a promise; he had figured out Derek was a bigger sap than he was. They were pretty evenly matched on the mother-hen angle though because the next thing Stiles knew he was being ordered around right back to be sure he didn’t forget his breakfast.

 

***


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta says: "here thar be feelz."
> 
> \-----

The day couldn't get much better after that. The dishes were next and then they got an early start on making lunch. The plan was to get everything prepared and set out so Stiles and Derek didn't have to wait around for the fights to happen again. It didn't have a chance because the cook - Kenny called him Samo - came back again. There was food to unload and then cook. They just shoved the lunch food out to the dining room table and the kitchen was declared off limits to everyone else.

Samo didn't want to babysit them since it wasn't his project and he left for the day as soon as he made it absolutely clear that the kitchen would be sparkling in the morning when he got back to it or there would be problems. Even Kenny and Braeden left after that. The other alphas apparently wanted a feast prepared more than they wanted to harass Derek. It made the day go a lot faster and Stiles didn't worry so much; there was a locked door between them and anybody he had to worry about, just like when they were upstairs.

Naturally, as a result, a food-fight happened with the flour and the sink faucet since it had a handy hose attachment. To fight the sink-attack, Derek armed himself with the chocolate syrup meant for desserts. Stiles upgraded to a bottle of BBQ sauce and a war broke out. That was the best worst idea anybody had ever had and they lost about a half hour of cooking time after that without even noticing. (It was a very good thing Samo wasn't coming back that day.)

Somehow there was actually a meal put together and cooked before they were checked up on hours later. It smelled perfect and was just short of mocking them so they served plates for themselves first and had them hidden by the time Kenny and Braeden came back.  
Kenny was hardly in the door before he was swearing.

"For fucks sake, you two are the stupidest, most suicidal, goddamn..."

"What?" asked Stiles. He pointed to the island and counter-tops and the dozen serving bowls waiting on them to be moved out to the dining room. "It's done, everything except the turkey. Twenty minutes on that."

Even Braeden glared at them. "And there's nothing at all wrong with the rest of this picture?"

Confused, Stiles looked to Derek. And then saw the problem. Derek was still dusted with flour, and he had BBQ sauce dried onto his forehead in smudges and a smear going down over his temple made it look like he had been hit with a pan.

"Uhmmm..." Stiles scratched at his hair and realized then it stood up in random spikes from the chocolate attack. Derek slowly cracked even though it was the last smart thing to do and Stiles looked back to Kenny with a half-hearted shrug and a smile. "Oops?"

Their babysitter rushed out a few more sacrilegious swear words and then stepped out of the doorway. "Upstairs before somebody sees either of you," he said.

"What about the-"

"You've got a time limit on the shower then, don't you, dumbass?"

Despite himself, Stiles just smirked when Kenny went to smack the back of his head and suffered instant recoil from the chocolate he got on his hands for it.

 

***

 

Locked in upstairs, there had been two seconds when he almost said something and Derek would have agreed and things would have been awesome. There was one shower and two of them and they looked at each other, all kinds of kitchen mess, and Derek just smiled at him. Stiles opened his mouth but didn't say anything, let it sit there a second, and Derek hesitated too.

"Twenty minutes," he said as a reminder.

"Fifteen now," Stiles corrected. Derek pushed him toward the bathroom, hanging over his shoulder to kiss away a streak of chocolate near Stiles' jaw. Then he waited his turn on the shower in the bedroom where it was smarter.

All the same, Stiles was calmer when they got back down to the kitchen. Distracted. He set the food out on the tables in the dining room, left the plates stacked up so the buffet line could form far away from Derek, and the alpha werewolves could fight with each other over the monster turkey Samo had managed to find. There was a large mess in the kitchen that they had to clean up before Samo came back and damaged someone.

Stiles was washing a pan in the sink - he barely did chores at home, it _would_ figure he had to do them while kidnapped - when Derek motioned for him to be quieter. Heeding the advice, he cast wary glances at the closed door between them and the alphas every so often. Derek would randomly leave to put away whatever he had just dried and he would stand a little closer to Stiles when he came back, like he could tell when the paranoia started climbing. He kept quiet to let Derek listen for trouble.

Not long later Stiles took the eventual oath and the near-drop of a vegetable strainer to mean trouble. Derek nudged his shoulder and shoved him away from the sink, shoved the drying cloth in his wet hands to switch jobs and keep himself physically between Stiles and the door.

“What?” Stiles asked.

“Deucalion doesn’t usually bother to come down here for dinner,” said Derek. “They have it sent up there so he and a few others can watch me starve. Lots of fun, nice little routine.”

“Dude, that is not what _fun_ means,” muttered Stiles. He tried to focus on the chore of drying as Derek washed. The door opened then and Kenny looked in on them.

“Boss says you’re being civilized tonight, gents,” he said. There was a formal caution in his tone despite his usual casual attitude. He pointed toward the cupboard. “Get yourself plates and get out here.”

The pair followed him out and Stiles felt like he was walking into a set-up. They had everyone’s attention. Kenny took his chair near Braeden and nodded them on to the other end of the table. Stiles was relieved to see that Samo and a few others hadn’t shown up. There were two long tables in the room to accommodate everyone at once, with seats for ten people per table. Even with some missing things were crowded enough, and Stiles guessed there was some kind of hierarchy to the seating arrangements. Braeden, Kenny and Chuck were all at the table with Deucalion. The leader of the pack of alphas waved Derek toward him, to a pair of empty seats at his left.

“Derek, Stiles,” he said in his usual false-friendly greeting. Before Stiles could escape to put himself safely out of alpha-werewolf reach at the end of the table, he was directed to the seat beside Deucalion. It smelled like human sacrifices were planned and Stiles looked to Derek for the sign to run instead. Derek slipped into the chair that was left for him, the ever-present anger banked behind his resting-bitch-gonna-die face. Stiles settled into his chair then and tried to not look or sound like small prey.

“Quite the Thanksgiving feast you’ve put together, boys,” said Deucalion. He set something down on the table and slid it toward Stiles. It was a burner phone, cheap rechargeable thing from Wal-Mart or somewhere. Beside him, Derek swore and leaned his elbows on the table while Stiles just stared, dumb. He knew it was a trap.

“You worked hard to put it together and it is a family holiday after all,” the alpha said. “Your father is all you have left of family, and Derek’s isn’t a concern, so one call won’t hurt anything.”

“Now?” Stiles managed. “Uh, I mean, everyone’s holding their dinner and-”

“Werewolves, Stiles,” Deucalion said. “They’ll eat when they want. You won’t change their plans.”

It was a challenge, another test. He was supposed to leave the phone alone, just like when Kenny had taunted him with it. What was he supposed to say to his dad in a room while literally surrounded by eavesdropping werewolves? If he said just one wrong thing then his dad would get to hear him shredded. Deucalion just wanted to make him cry like a little girl again, the shredding would be a bonus.

And it still wasn’t a strong enough reason not to check on his dad.

Stiles snatched the phone and flipped it open. He was surprised to find his dad’s cell phone number in the contacts already. It meant nothing good but Stiles rolled with it. He punched the button to make the call and, just to really piss people off, he held the phone just off the table between himself and Derek to put it on speakerphone. By the second ring he was leaned on Derek's shoulder and hunkered over the table, pretending it was actually possible to listen harder. Third ring and then...

"Stilinski," came the greeting. His dad was tired. Not asleep or just woken up, but tired. He had a few cases that made him get that way sometimes, too many hours, not enough sleep, not enough answers. Stiles remembered the Hale house had done it to him once; Derek's family luck was apparently really harsh on his dad's health.

"Hey Dad," said Stiles, careful how he talked so he didn't give his dad a heart attack.

"Stiles? Stiles-"

"And Derek too," Stiles said quickly. "You're... on speakerphone."

"What the - Derek?"

Derek gave him a dirty look for dragging him into it but he at least tried. "Uh. Yeah. I'm here too, Sheriff."

"Where the hell _is_ here?"

"Uh. Not sure," lied Stiles. "There's snow. It's all bullshit. Did you go to Mrs. M and Scott's?"

"What?" The tone of his father's voice changed from the panicked urgency to a calm interest in paying attention. That was a good sign. It meant Stiles could talk to his dad, stall and be safer.

"For the free turkey?" he prompted, "It's Thanksgiving..."

"Well, I've kinda been a little busy, son. I hadn't really paid attention to the calendar to be honest..."

"Then go to Scott's. Just walk. While we're talking," said Stiles.

"How'd you know I'd be home?"

"Because I've been gone for a week so at this point you've run down every lead you've got, you ran into nothing, and the board made you take some time before you did something stupid," said Stiles. The fake smile had faded as he made his report, not just for his dad but for the snoopy werewolf lurking who could steal his phone. There were consequences to stealing people’s kids and Deucalion had screwed with an entire town. But more than that, he’d screwed with Stiles’ dad and he had to know things were still okay.

"Wow," said the sheriff. "My kid's good."

"Twenty percent chance you and Jim Beam are working together on it," Stiles added in. "But I doubt it since you're awake."

"That was _last_ night, when my leave started," the sheriff said. "Knocked me right out and started with a hangover this morning."

"Good, then go have turkey with the McCall's for me," said Stiles. His dad agreed but he still wanted to know what was going on. Stiles let the question hang there. He looked to Derek, but neither of them knew how to answer it.

"We're... I think we're gonna take a job. There's... Hey, I'm learning how to fight finally, Dad. All those years you wished I'd get off my computer and take a karate class or boxing or something, and I'm finally doing it."

"That's... Wow."

"Must be an incentive thing," Stiles said. He sagged a little heavier at Derek's shoulder.

"Scott's going to be pissed, you realize," said the sheriff.

"About so many things," agreed Stiles. So many things he couldn’t elaborate. There were so many topics he couldn’t even touch on without potentially losing the phone. He wanted to ramble and keep his dad on the phone until he got to Scott’s, he wanted to talk to Scott when he got there, he wanted to make Deucalion order him off the phone so his dad and Scott could hear who it was... He didn’t figure his dad wanted to hear about Derek getting his ass kicked on a daily basis because he had an ugly face though.

Stiles suddenly allowed himself a moment of smug pride and mentally prepared to get hit later. "Dad! I need you to tell Scotty something though. Freakin' start this one around _town_ -"

Derek seemed to catch on and went pale. "Don't you even-"

"I've been making out with _Derek Hale_ for like a week now," said Stiles.

"You’re sure as hell not tonight," muttered Derek. He tried to shake Stiles off his arm but Stiles just braced off his knee instead. There were snorts of laughter from the nosy tables, a look of absolute confusion on Deucalion's face, and a stunned silence from the sheriff on the other end of the line.

"Probably not but if I'm not home to start that one around myself, they're just going to have to do it for me," Stiles told Derek. Laughing hurt a helluva lot less than it would to break down and cry from homesickness, so Derek's pride could just deal.

"I ask again, Stiles. What the hell is going on?" came his dad's voice, this time he was using the Sheriff-tone though. There was no way he hadn't heard the other people responding to what Stiles had said and it probably did nothing to make him feel better, not knowing where Stiles was or what he was involved in. All the sheriff knew was Stiles was a week missing, in the snow, with Derek _(who he made out with, brilliant idea there, Stiles..._ ) and their phone call had an actual audience. The laughter faded off and Stiles crossed his arms on the table, set his head down next to the phone there.

"You're walking to have thanksgiving with the pack," Stiles told him, sobered. "And you're gonna tell 'em we're okay and we're gonna take a job in another pack’s territory. So Scotty’s down by two. We’re bailing on him.”

The room around Stiles went silent. It sounded like his dad really was walking to the McCalls because it almost sounded like rain on his end.

“Dad?”

“Stiles. When are you coming home?”

Stiles put his face down on his arms, not sure how to answer and not sure how to keep his voice from giving away a lie. Picking up on the distress signal, Derek rested a hand at the nape of his neck and combed his fingers into the shaggy hair to help offer calm. He leaned a little closer to the phone as he did so.

“Sheriff? We don’t know. There’s no timeline. We’re just not going home,” Derek said. “He’s safe. He just wants you to stop looking for us and go back to work.”

“Derek, so help me, put my kid back on the phone.”

“I’m right here, Dad,” Stiles managed. “But we gotta go. Love you.”

It was the hardest sign-off in his life. Derek had to end the call for him; Stiles just kept his head down on his arms and stared at the phone. He stayed that way as Derek handed the phone over to Deucalion.

"Always something to be thankful for," the alpha said, thoughtful. "And now a few things to discuss."

Stiles kept his head down but stared at Derek. The werewolf just nodded, rubbed at his neck. It was going to be a long dinner.

 

***


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta says: HERE THAR BE MORE FEELZ. *TISSUE WARNING.*
> 
>  
> 
> \----

Of course it wasn't until Stiles was drugged on tryptophan and exhaustion that Deucalion wanted to discuss what he'd overheard before dinner. It was a pack matter so it was a pack discussion and Stiles saw that going so painfully wrong so easily.

"I'm gonna go start coffee," he muttered, bowing out.

"Sit," Deucalion ordered. He looked down the table to Kenny. "Go start coffee."

The hunter jumped when he was told and Stiles watched enviously as he left the room.

The rest of the group was presented with the option to weigh in on Hale-plus-one making it into the pack. It seemed stupid to ask their opinion now, after having kidnapped Hale-plus-one and making it entirely impossible for any other outcome, so Stiles caught the vibe this was mostly formality. A hollow appeal to democracy.

"I've got a problem with it," said someone at the other table. Stiles looked over and saw it was the man who had fought Derek that morning, Fisher. "I've got a few problems with it."

"Alright," said Deucalion. There was a tension in his voice that suggested he already knew them. "What are they?"

"Ennis. Kali."

Deucalion shook his head. "Kali is responsible for her own death. If she had done as I told her to years ago, she would still be here. That was her reckoning and had nothing to do with Hale."

"Fine, but that leaves Ennis," said Fisher.

"Again, not brought about by Hale," said Deucalion.

"His pack caused it," said Fisher. "He's not an alpha. The kid's not even a wolf-"

"Come on," muttered Stiles. He rolled his eyes and then froze as he remembered that sarcasm was easily overheard by werewolves. Deucalion arched an eyebrow and looked over at him.

"Something to say, Stiles?" he asked.

"Maybe, but that doesn't mean I should," Stiles replied. His alternative was lying in a room full of lie-detectors and he didn't want to see them all go off at once on him. Deucalion's expression twisted into a challenging grin.

"Maybe it does."

Stiles didn't like the idea but now he was being waited on. He huffed and shrugged; it wasn't on him if he pissed them off.

"It’s just, the sign on the front door is exactly that. It's a sign, and that's it. Everyone here used to be an alpha, sure, but they killed their pack to keep their strength. That was the trade-off," he said. "Yeah, alpha-force is strong with this crowd, but at the end of the day, you're the only one here who has anybody backing you. It doesn't matter that Derek's not an alpha now, 'cause he's just like the others. Former alpha. He's not as strong maybe but he can do all the same tricks as everybody else."

It didn't seem to start a revolution so Stiles sat back and let himself breathe when he saw Deucalion smile. The alpha looked back to the pack around them.

"Derek’s from a stronger stock than anyone in this room. He can contribute just as much as any of you. And as for the boy, packs I greatly respect were once mixed. There is strength there. So he's not a werewolf. But that's obviously not what he brings to the group," he said.

"Smart mouth, sarcasm, and a wolf to back him," said Kenny. "Seems familiar."

"You're older, more of an ass in general, really, and the hunter background is useful," said Deucalion. "Have no fear, we aren’t replacing you. Yet."

"He's off limits," said Derek. At the ultimatum Deucalion looked over at him. "Stiles isn't a wolf and he stays that way. The bite could kill him. He's either in as-is or neither one of us are in."

"Seems reasonable," said the alpha. "Braeden and her brother brought in Kenny with the same arrangement."

"Can I get it in writing?" Stiles asked, mildly surprised by the easy acceptance. The alpha's expression was unusually shifty at that and Stiles decided he wasn't proficient enough in legalese to even put it in writing to protect himself; for that he'd need Lydia. "I'd need to fax it to my lawyer," he added.

"You're a minor, this is not the US, and contract law does not apply to you for a year," said Deucalion, mildly amused.

"Nice of you to notice the whole lack of parent-slash-legal guardian thing," Stiles said. It was a challenge, willful and insolent and a really bad idea, but he said it anyway. The alpha stared at him, in that creepy way werewolves got when they were reading things that Stiles couldn't tell he was projecting. Rather than backhand the bratty behavior, Deucalion pulled the burner phone from his pocket and dismantled it, taking the battery out. He put it back together and handed the phone to Stiles.

"That's why this is yours," he said calmly. He held up the battery. "And this is mine."

There were no other protests to Derek's existence in the pack after that when Deucalion returned to the issue. Stiles hung on to the phone like a lifeline. For the rest of the meal he didn't give Deucalion any of the usual brand of crap. He drank his coffee and tried to stay focused as the room slowly dissolved into small pockets of conversation from person to person and table to table.

The phone was no good without the battery. Stiles was smart enough to know when he was being played. But it was still a really big deal to have it there, in his hands, where he could push buttons and flip the screen up and down.

Derek caught him playing with it and the eyebrows did the _worried_ thing. There was no way Stiles was going to be able to leave it alone so he snapped the phone closed again and reached over to put it in Derek's jeans pocket instead of his own. He caught his fingers in the pocket too. He hung on to Derek until they were allowed to go back to the kitchen to finish cleaning up. Then he just followed him around until he caught the hint and pulled Stiles in for a hug to hide in for awhile.

 

***

 

The mess in the kitchen was gone by around midnight. They had to wait for the dishwasher to get everything put away because Derek didn’t care enough to challenge Samo on it in the morning. Despite Derek’s annoyance with the phone call, they messed around in the kitchen when they had everything else cleaned up and had the time to kill. Passive-aggressive werewolves got pretty damn creative about abusing other wolves’ territory without getting caught and Stiles only settled down when he realized he was in danger of developing a kitchen kink.

Kenny got them locked up for the night in their room and Stiles told him to cancel the wake-up call because they were taking the day off. The hunter didn’t seem to place a high priority on customer service and replied, “I’ll stretch it to 6:01 then, give you a little extra time.” Not what Stiles had been aiming for but he wasn’t going to say no to a whole extra minute without the rest of the world.

As Stiles snuck by on his way to the bed, he stopped just to fish the cell phone out of Derek's pocket. Derek was still trying to figure out what the heck he had done to his clothes while Stiles was crashing on to the bed to play with the phone. It flipped open with a satisfying _snick!_ and Stiles swiped at the screen to clean it. Arms crossed, Derek stood over him, possibly amused but at the very least not scowling, Stiles was too distracted to pay full attention in a mostly dark room.

“Don’t get too attached to it,” Derek warned. “It could be gone tomorrow.”

“Kinda like my life, but I’m gonna go ahead and hang on to that as long as I can,” said Stiles. The phone had no power source but he started pushing buttons to dial familiar numbers anyway; home, Scott’s, his dad’s cell phone, the station. He even punched the numbers for the delivery place he called most.

“That’s the plan anyway,” said Derek. Rather than shove him over or go around the bed, Derek climbed over Stiles to stretch out beside him. He ended up crushing knees and elbows in a bid to play - _big damn puppy goddamnit_ \- and Stiles let him while resolutely pushing buttons on his new shitty, broken phone.

“Is it gonna work?” Stiles asked.

“The phone? Not unless you pocketed the battery, too,” replied Derek.

“No.” Stiles rolled his eyes. “The other thing. The pack thing. Is there some magical _voodoo he done_ to make us pack and safe now or what? Nobody bitched you out over dinner.”

“Nope, no voodoo. We just hope he trusts us,” said Derek. “I don’t magically trust the guy because he gave you a dead cell phone.”

“Not like I do either,” Stiles said, quick to assure him that he hadn’t gone completely because of the phone. “But I’d be okay if things didn’t suck tomorrow.”

"I can try to get the battery back tomorrow," offered Derek.

"That would cause a seriously sucky day. Don't even think about it," Stiles said quickly. "It's just a phone. I get it. But I- look, I've been away from home this long once. I was with Scott, and we were only gone like five days, and I called my dad twenty times a day and I sent him pictures and shit... It's stupid but I miss _everything_ and it's messing with my head 'cause I could just pick up a phone..."

"Stiles, stop." Derek eased up off his side to lever himself back into Stiles' line of sight. He knelt over him, swung a leg over Stiles' so he could balance better in the playful pin. He had a hand on the bed on either side of Stiles' shoulders and could have done push-ups over him except Stiles held the phone up between them so it just barely missed Derek.

"You're allowed to miss them. But we're gonna get back," he said. "This is a phone he gave you to mess with your head. It's not... It's not home. Just a phone."

"Sucky phone, too," muttered Stiles. "No Angry Birds."

"No music, no internet," added Derek.

Stiles huffed and tossed the phone onto the bed. "Great. Now I miss my _phone_."

Derek rested his forehead to Stiles'. "When we get back, you'll get your phone back. And then you use it to _call for help_ next time there's trouble. While you run the hell away."

"No," said Stiles.

"You should have."

"You don't get to _I-told-you-so_ me over it because you were shot and I wasn't going to leave you there," Stiles insisted. Derek nodded and stared down at him from up close.

"I know."

Stiles smirked. "Don't _Han Solo_ me, either, jerk."

Derek's lips quirked up in a grin. "You're the one who broadcasts everything."

"I'm the one with your name under the bloody red paw print on my arm so I'm allowed to broadcast what I want," said Stiles. "My tattoo's more badass than yours."

"That's because it's not a tattoo, dumbass," replied Derek.

Stiles wasn’t a fan of tattoos in the first place, so he agreed with a quick nod. "Battle scars are more badass than tattoos."

The suddenly hungry expression on Derek's face told Stiles the man wasn't going to argue with that one. He grinned up at him, smug.

"We have a shower," Derek said instead. "We should use it."

Stiles stared at him, smug expression slowly matching Derek's as his imagination took over that decision entirely. He nodded and shoved at his chest, brought his legs up to start shoving himself off the bed. Then he changed tactics, pulled himself more upright by pulling Derek's shirt over his head. Derek crawled back and let him keep it as he stood up. Stiles caught his belt and Derek trapped his hand there to pull him off the bed as he walked toward the bathroom. Stiles followed, arm stuck around Derek's front so messing blindly with the belt buckle while trying to get his own shirt off one handed.

“Think they’re gonna swap out our stuff for the monogrammed shit?” he wondered distractedly, his chin stuck and his general lack of skill at undressing himself completely gangly and awkward like usual. Derek turned and moved backwards as he helped Stiles fix the problem with his clothes.

“They better not. I fucking hate polos.”

 

***

 

The next day went back to the routine, except Derek got fed. He still got in fights but the results weren't as noticeable.

A few days after that, Derek went to the dojo with them and helped train. They moved the furniture out of one of the empty rooms at the house - there were a lot of them because the pack didn't all live there - and the time spent in town got cut in half when it became the practice room. Stiles got free range access to the kitchen, despite Samo's bitching. Derek got chores there in a trade which meant Stiles helped. He also disappeared a lot; Stiles got _a_ _lot_ cranky about that.

And Stiles missed home like nothing he had ever known. He missed Scott, he missed his dad, he missed Allison and Lydia, he even missed Isaac. Deucalion didn't trust him completely- the man was smarter than Stiles gave him credit for - so for awhile all phone calls had to be supervised, but he got to call his dad every other day or so. His dad caught the hint and stopped asking questions like a cop and switched to the parent ones, asking about safety and if Stiles was getting fed, and what about school? A few days after that question came up, Stiles was enrolled in an online high school through the Beacon Hills school district; his dad got the bill and said thank you. (Stiles didn't.)

Since Deucalion snooped, he put in place anything the elder Stilinski seemed to want for his kid, except two things: he made it impossible for Stiles to go home, and he wasn't going to chaperone Stiles and Derek or separate them to give Stiles his own space. For all that he acted like an invisible step-parent in some kind of competition, Deucalion still had his own objective in keeping them imprisoned and he would not sacrifice an inch of control to that end. Whatever it was.

As far as anyone back home knew, however, Stiles was a runaway. His dad had reclaimed the jeep and he said he'd started driving it to work to keep it in shape. The sheriffs department had impounded Derek's car (since it was found abandoned on county property) when he went missing but this time he had been kept off the suspects list. When Stiles' dad asked who to release the car to, Derek had him sign it over to Melissa McCall, with express instructions to never let Scott drive it or Peter bitch her out about it. Derek seemed to assume Peter would catch what he needed to know through the grapevine (not that they could tell the grapevine much of anything useful) and stay out of trouble if he didn't leave town to track down Cora. But, Derek warned, someone had to watch him because Peter would be looking for a pack. Scott said he was on it. (That didn't really make Derek feel any better but Deucalion didn't want Derek talking to Scott in the first place so there wasn't anything to be done about that.)

Calling home tended to mess with Stiles' head for an hour or so afterwards. He started adopting Derek's Bruce-Banner-state of _always-angry_ anytime he left their room and it got worse right after talking to his dad. He was just generally angry as a rule, really, but it got noticeable after calling home. Stiles started trouble for the sake of starting shit after he got homesick. That never went well. Ever. Stiles’ attitude had progressed to something along the lines of _fuck it anyway_.

So of course, around a month of being gone from his real life and his family and his home, Stiles hung up with his dad and had to deal with the stupid alpha. The man planned to change the routine again. Stiles didn’t want to deal with it. He stood up to leave as soon as it was mentioned.

"Wait," he ordered. Stiles waited, but ignored the implied order to sit back down. Derek didn't and dropped back into his chair.

"This concerns you," Deucalion said. "So sit."

Not bothering to hide his annoyance, Stiles crashed back into the seat and waited.

"I think it's time we discuss our options in regards to Gerard Argent," the alpha said. "You've been here long enough to pull your own weight."

"We can discuss Gerard," agreed Stiles automatically. "But Allison and Chris still aren't on the table."

"For now," said Deucalion. "I've waited years to get what I want, Stiles. Your moral compass won't last as long as mine."

It wasn't that Stiles was agreeable to his new life but he had gotten used to it. He knew what to expect from the psychos he surrounded himself with. For one thing, he knew how far he could push Deucalion before regretting it, and that was important to the well-being of his personal morale. He had figured out which of the wolves were psycho and which were just in it for the paycheck, like Braeden. That was useful. He knew who would back their alpha when Stiles and Derek finally ran and he had a good guess on who would just babysit the house for the guy when he chased them. One way or another, Stiles wanted to be home by Christmas. He was stronger and had a better shot at defending himself, but he still couldn't drop Derek to the mat. A few more weeks and maybe he could get somewhere. So if he bought himself some time by not arguing about the Argents for once, Stiles could do it. He glanced over at Derek and, at his silent question, just shrugged. Derek nodded back. He looked to their alpha.

"Fine," said Derek. "Where do we start?"

 

***

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, after much mental debate and fretting, this is the end of Part 1 of a 3-parter for various reasons. For one thing, you'll notice that Stiles became a kind of unstable/unreliable narrator on me, soooo Derek took over. I'll make this one a series (I apparently can't write stand-alones even when I try.) and next up in line is "Blue"... (because that gifset that started it all had a red gif, a black gif, and a blue one... I'm nothing if not original, right?) ... and I'll get the first of it posted too. AKA: Don't lynch me for the sucky ending!! It's not the end!!!
> 
> (PS: FYI, the feelz are strictly-chaotic's fault. She said I could. Challenge Accepted from HERE ON OUT...)


End file.
